mapping

Rentometer is a useful mashup, one that's part scientific, and another pure speculation. The idea is simple: just plug in your ZIP code, the size of your dwelling, and how much you're paying, and Rentometer will cross-check your price with local property listings pulled in from parent company iiProperty. Results show up on two screens, one that's a little bit like a speedometer, and another that's simply a Google Map with nearby property listings.

This is a great service if you're apartment hunting, since you can see if the price is higher or lower than … Read more

Google has gotten a lot of flack from privacy advocates for photographing faces and license plate numbers and displaying them on the Street View in Google Maps. Originally, the company said only people who identified themselves could ask the company to remove their image.

But Google has quietly changed that policy, partly in response to criticism, and now anyone can alert the company and have an image of a license plate or a recognizable face removed, not just the owner of the face or car, says Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google.

"It'… Read more

That handy new no-nonsense embedding feature for Google Maps has gone live today. Clicking the "link to this page" option on the top right of any map will give you quick and dirty embed code to place into any blog or Web site that supports it. There's also an advanced option set to tweak the size from small, medium, large, or custom like I've done with the one embedded below. Instead of using Adobe Flash, Google employs an iframe to simply load the page within the page.

This is a far easier solution than tracking down … Read more

In advance of Labor Day weekend and its inevitable coast-to-coast traffic jams, Microsoft is releasing Streets & Trips 2008 software. Among the new features in the deluxe edition are live traffic updates, information on nearby gas prices, and estimates of what filling up along the journey will cost for that Hummer, Prius, or whatever else you're driving. It also hooks up to Live Search maps that you can mark up, and which chart businesses including hotels, snack spots and camping areas.

Despite such helpful features, this product seems like an odd fit in the market when you can get … Read more

Metagator Popurls has a fun new feature this morning called Popurls.TV that shows you a real-time traffic map of links people are clicking on, and also where they're clicking from. Clicking any single link will take you right to the original story. It's across between Digg Spy and Twittervision, and like the former, it's a fun way to see what's popular on the site. For a more exact account of what's doing well, there are also three sets of links above the map to show you the most trafficked stories within the last hour, … Read more

Yahoo is making its biggest update in the last two years to its local search site, allowing customer reviews and proximity to influence results.

To start with, the Yahoo Local site gets a whole new look. It's better organized and more visually appealing than before. The home page shows a customized skyline for 20 cities (in San Francisco it's the Golden Gate Bridge, Coit Tower and the Transamerica Pyramid Building), along with local weather.

The top center portion of the site features rotating links to the most popular reviews, events, maps and buzz, or the most popular search … Read more

So, you want to work for Google but you don't have a graduate degree in computer science from an Ivy League school. How about being a Google local search ads sales rep contractor? As such you can earn up to $10 for each business listing that is approved by Google and verified by the business.

According to the FAQ on Google's Web site:

"As a Google Business Referral Representative, you'll visit local businesses to collect information (such as hours of operation, types of payment accepted, etc.) for Google Maps, and tell them about Google Maps and … Read more

Google will be releasing a new feature next week that will enable people to easily embed a Google Map into their Web site or blog, just like you can do with a YouTube video. No coding or programming required; just copying and pasting a snippet of HTML, a Google spokeswoman says.

"To embed a Google Map, users will simply pull up the map they want to embed--it can be a location, a business, series of driving directions, or a My Map they have created--and then click 'Link to this page' and copy and paste the HTML into their Web … Read more

On Wednesday at Siggraph, I attended an interesting panel (details here) on the subject of "The Potential of End-User-Programmable Worlds."

In addition to the two organizers, the panelists included Paul Hemp of Harvard Business Review, Asi Lang of Linden Labs (the company that runs Second Life), and Vernor Vinge. Vinge is a faculty alumnus of San Diego State University, but better known as the author of "9 or 10 science-fiction novels," as he says. (I asked about that uncertainty; he said it's more about the definition of a novel than his ability to remember what he's written.)

You may have seen some of the recent news about Second Life. Last week, Linden Labs shut down… Read more