On Beyond Wikis

Now that I've completed the famous 23 things, I thought I'd continue on to some other web-based tidbits. Toward the bottom of my blog you'll see (I hope) a map displaying the locations of all the HCPL branches. I did this at a website called Community Walk, where you can create maps for online groups with specific interests. It could be locations of good restaurants, hiking trails, local producers of meat and vegetables, the homes of people in a book discussion group, etc. And you can add details, directions, and whatever so that they pop up when you point at a location.

More famous and much more global is the ever-expanding GoogleEarth, which has been in the news lately. You have to first download the software, but then you can fly to any place on the globe right down to street level in many cases, and click on a myriad of details placed there by other people: photos, descriptions, maps, statistics, whatever. There are many sites placed by the World Wildlife Fund, National Geographic, various voluntary organizations (including actual photos of burned out and abandoned villages in war-torn Darfur in Africa). People have developed overlays showing skateboarding locations, bookstores, places they went to on their honeymoon, and on and on. Also on the map (you can turn various layers on and off so that they don't all show at the same time) are restaurants, hotels, pharmacies, banks, and other commercial venues. I saw one area that showed the locations of all the public schools within a county. Since GoogleMaps encourages third parties to add content, the possibilities are endless. And the navigating tool is awesome. You start at the global level, type in a place, and fly around the curvature of the Earth, and down, down, down right to person height. I read that there's even a map of Mars under development or available (I forget which). Check this stuff out, and maybe even use it for your personal or business needs.