Life is grand

Got to say the new MyMaps feature of Google Maps is dead simple yet good. Here is a quick map I built of some places in Waterford, Ireland I frequent. The functions are simple but the useful ones have been implemented; push pins, lines and areas.

There are other services like this with many having better features but this is part of my Google account and ten to one the data I enter here is aggregated into the overall Google Maps database.

Now if only Google would get some good maps of Ireland. Microsoft’s Local Live has much better maps of Ireland.

Twingly Screensaver is an interesting visualisation of blogosphere activity. It renders a turning globe with blog activity spiking out from different parts of the world. It reminds me a bit of Mapped Up.

Traditional feed aggregators are still a lot more powerful for churning through news than this. But this kind of visualisation could be useful as an adjunct for trend watching. They should really allow you to keyword filter Twingly Screensaver.

(It requires Windows and OpenGL but works OK in Parallels.)

Check out the mapping features for Flickr. Very cool. Above you can see a broad view of Europe with clusters of photos (the more you zoom in the more it shows, clever feature.)

And here you can see me dragging photos onto the map which will then tag my photos with their location. Dead easy and very slick.

My only concern is that I won’t keep it up. Everytime I add a photo will I got to the bother of going into the Organizer and dragging photos onto maps? Maybe when I upload new photos there can just be a simple drop-down listing previously located areas for my photos.

Still, good job Flickr and Yahoo!