Google maps.....
Can it get much better really?
This site allowed me to not only plot out and record my entire trip to Queensland, but thanks to the level of detail in many places allowed me to get a feel for the roads I was going to be riding down in some locations and have some idea of the kinds of conditions I was going to be encountering.
And now with google street view, as much as I am worried about the general privacy issues, it enables me to have a snoop around the streets of the location I am trying to get to, and pick out some of the land marks ahead of time. So when I am riding and I don't really have the freedom to consult a map on the go like you would do in a car, I can often navigate to my destination with just the visual landmarks I have memorised in google street view, even if I have never been there before.
On top of that, there is now the option for things like GPS tagged photos to be added to the maps as well, so that even if the overhead satalite maps are getting a bit long in the tooth, a local could throw up a few recent photographs tagged to a particular location, showing what it is like now?
Want to know what sunset off a particular pier looks like, there you go!
So it is this ability to mash together coherantly all these different sorts of data to give people a broader picture that is one of the best features of Web 2.0 and it's associated technologies. It gives context to the data, instead of just making it a pile of facts. Much like the work we librarians do really. So we could see it as a bit of a kindred spirit I guess.
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