This photo from Failblog illustrates a common experience for many online map users. In it, someone has posted a couple of signs stating “Dead End – Google error – Road Not Passable With Car – Google is in error…”, followed by detour instructions:
The picture is funny, but the experience of driving somewhere wrong is not. Read the rest of this entry »
Greg Sterling called attention to AT&T Yellowpages.com’s apparent rebranding project which will use “YP.com” as their dominant online site/brand going forward.
While I’ve been openly critical of some of AT&T directories’ decisions in the past, I think this is definitely a smart move. I think there’s sufficient indication that the concept and recognition of the “Yellow Pages” brand is becoming obsolete. It would appear that AT&T agrees with me, since this amounts to a major tectonic shift in their branding. Read the rest of this entry »
SepiaTown (tagline: “From Here To Then”) is a cool Google Maps mashup that I recently ran across.
The service takes historical photos and maps them to their locations on a Google Map.
The example screengrab above is from the historic Chinese Tung Food Company in downtown San Francisco, California.
The service is set up with a simple, “clean” feel, making it very easy to use.
I think that increasingly there will be instances of people taking various kinds of historical data like these vintage photograph images, and making more available through search engines and through Google Maps.
Imagine that it might be possible at some future point to click to slide some sort of tool in Google Maps which would move along a timeline, allowing one to only choose content from a particular, past timeframe.
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Spokeo appears to be the latest player in the personal data aggregator space, mashing up public data, web search results and social media to generate profiles about people and home addresses.
Spokeo.com - A people search data aggregator
The concept isn’t new, although adding on social media contents further broadens the dimensions of content that could be compiled about an individual. Read the rest of this entry »
I’m contemplating doing a series of posts on here of “Local SEO 101” tips. Each post would outline a specific tactic for ranking in local search results, including local searches under blended/Universal Search as well as with Google Maps and other local search engines.
Local Search Ranking Factors include a lot of pieces including citations from internet yellow pages, newspapers, vertical directories, community guides, business review sites, and more.
Student designers Rahul Mahtani & Yofred Moik from the Industrial Design program at Syracuse University came up with an interesting mashup. The concept is that one could write a note in Gmail, then click to have it snailmailed for a small fee. The paper envelope for the mail would be printed up with route directions from Google Maps.
Google Maps Snailmail by Rahul Mahtani and Yofred Moik
I think the concept flies a bit in the face of the trends away from print media, but there’s something compelling about the idea all the same. I like the envelopes with destination/route map images printed on them, even though I think the actual route information would be of minor-to-no-use for delivery men. And, I think there’d definitely be some market for sending snailmail notes from the Gmail interface.
Pongsocket has some fantastic satellite maps picked out as “Earth Art” from Google. Ex:
Each of the aerial/satellite pictures highlights some extraordinary terrain or landscape coloration and patterns. The pictures have a wonderfully expressionistic feel to them and are well worth browsing.
However, these selections are not truly “Earth Art”, which is a name that refers to manmade constructions which fit into the natural environment in some way, rather like the works of Christo and Robert Smithson.
I’ve collected quite a bit of Earth Art examples for articles about Google Maps for a while now. Here’s Smithson’s famous “Spiral Jetty”:
Pongsocket’s examples are some really good samples of beautiful satellite or aerial photography. But, for it to be “art”, it requires human intervention of some sort – some level of intention.
A few days ago, a New York Times interview with Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman quotes him as saying that they don’t extort companies in return for suppressing negative reviews, but business owners fail to comprehend that reviews may appear and disappear based upon an algorithm that runs in the background.
Read the rest of this entry »
The Yellow Pages Group in Canada has announced a new logo makeover:
I really hate to think about how much was likely spent on this! I think the new logo is such a continued representation of the legacy yellow pages that it was pointless to make a change to it at all. Read the rest of this entry »
President of Argent Media SEO Company, Dallas, TX, Technologist, Artist & Commentator.
