Simple, yet interesting: search Twitter for a place name, bundle returned tweets in a new stream and watch what’s going on there.
Compared to a pure geographic search, the semantic search returns tweets about that place, instead of tweets located nearby. The content of geotagged tweets isn’t necessarily directly related to the place, as the geographic search results show. A combination of both methods might be useful though.
While Microsoft is successfully integrating Portugal’s aerials within Virtual Earth, Google is asking local governments for more 3D models to add in Google Earth. Adena sums both stories very well up.
What I found a little surprising on Google’s “give us your 3D models and we bring you tourists” initiative is that last week I read something about Hamburg’s and Berlin’s 3D models in Google Earth at Geografitti (in german):
Both cities do offer 3D models for Google Earth. Since their server capacity is limited, the 3D data doesn’t load fast enough for a smooth user experience and users keep complaining at Google (!!) for the poor performance. So the question was to put the city 3D models onto Google’s infrastructure and achieve better viewing results in Google Earth. But the problem for local governments and the reason why they couldn’t eventually find a solution was that apparently Google wouldn’t allow them to access and control their data (e.g. for updates) once it’s loaded on Google’s infrastructure.
Google Earth is an amazing geo-browser and the public would definitely benefit if more public geodata would be accessible through it. On the other hand, local authorities are sometimes strange to deal with and I have my doubts if the listed points (like “Boosting tourism”) are appealing enough for them to let their data go (to a company who is not evil but based on selling targeted advertising).
Yesterday Switzerland, today Austria. Seems like somebody is preparing for Euro 2008.
Google released today a localized version of Google Maps Austria. Users are now able to search and find information about local businesses in Google Maps here too. Apparently Google doesn’t make too many efforts acquiring business data. As they claim, all the data is provided by business owners who want to be found on Google Maps and communities (crowdsourcing is the new buzzword). Quite efficient I assume.
However, there is still room for improvement left. I personally know much more Schnitzel-places in the center of Vienna than the Schnitzel search on Google Maps returns yet.
Google entering the neighborhood business search market will give the local yellow pages top dog Herold some hard times. They recently came up with a brand new mapping application, very well done with beautiful high resolution aerial imagery and based on their comprehensive business data. It will be interesting to follow further development on that issue, especially in regard to strong local community sites like Tupalo or Qype. [via futurezone]