Saw Greg post about the New Google Maps Lab tab at the top of Google Maps now. Just zeroing in on the “Around Here” feature which does a “*” wildcard search around your current location and shows the top results. Grabbed a snapshot below. 
That certainly clears things up. :) Seems like more of a case of “we can, so let’s” instead of something that’s got a driving use case behind it.
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I’ve been wondering about this for a little bit. I’ve always thought the notion of “checking in” digitally to some place via a local social service like BrightKite or FourSquare to be a particularly novel behavior enabled by mobile Internet technologies. I’ve just wondered who came up with it first. I only ever saw it first with BrightKite but being that I’m not the most social guy, I may have missed it somewhere else. And I don’t count online check in for airlines here.
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After playing around with the Nexus One for a while, I’ve come to the conclusion that the Nexus is a cat and the iPhone is a dog. The iPhone is just warm and fuzzy and wants to jump up in your lap and lick your face. Nexus One, with it’s little “shrug” every time you hit the back button, is cool and sleek and wants to jump up off your lap and flick its tail and remind you that ultimately, in the long run, it doesn’t need you.
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Following a tweet from Greg, and Sebastien, and now the post on Read/Write Web, I went to the Google built-in browser on the Nexus One to try out Google’s “Near Me Now”. I don’t quite get why Marshall at RW says this doesn’t bode well for the likes of Yelp and NextStop (can someone say, Local Guides?). The site is pretty pedestrian; the production values pretty plain. Of course, if you’ve read Google’s PlaceRank patent, you’d be expecting this. They’re providing a list of most popular categories for canned searches that drive to result pages with links to their Place Pages. Got to tell you, though, results are quite good and I’ve always liked their Place Pages so if all you ever want is what everyone else always wants, you’re in good shape here. I can’t help but believe that there’s still more to answering the question to what’s “Near Me Now” than what’s behind a list of Google-blue international standard icons for restaurants, lodging, and shopping.
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I don’t really care about Pogue one way or the other. He writes some useful high-level consumer stuff (like about pocket projectors). But I do have to kind of sympathize with him for some of the hostile reaction he got to his generally positive piece on the N1. I mean, come on. Idiot? Incompetence? Pogue? Please. Upon reflection, though, I do feel something may have passed me by personally. I’ve been one of those open-source, Apple-loving, Microsoft-hating kind of guys for so long, I thought I’d only have to go to war with the old order. Now I might have to be an open-source, Google-loving, Apple-hating, Microsoft-equivocating kind of guy? Wow. Not sure, here. Given an option, I’ll always pick a fight, but I think I’m gonna need the afternoon to at least look at my new N1 before I don the shield and brandish the sword (although I admit, doing a little burning and pillaging of Apple’s group-hug, no central checkout, ain’t you lucky you can shop here “store” might be timely).
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So, I guess I just hadn’t seen this in Denver until now but doing a search in Google Maps for a location in our local shopping Mecca called Cherry Creek, I saw that Google Maps has all kind of little icons for the businesses layered over top of the map. Great for what I’ve always wanted, support for discovery, not just search. I started tweaking some of the marker locations (to get them out of the middle of a block) and then got linked over to the “Map Your World” discussion forum. This was what the New York Times was referring to in “Everyman Offers New Directions” the other day. Perhaps not as interesting as Pakistan and India fighting over the borders of Kashmir, but it works for me. The next step in discovery to me is to have some kind of layer that can you find similar Meccas when traveling.
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Another example of human vs machine - TIVO saying it’s going to change the channel I’m watching to what it’s been programmed to record. If I’m watching something the default should be to NOT change the channel to what it thinks I should watch. The default should be what I, the human, is watching. It should give me the option to watch what the automaton wants me to watch, not the other way around.
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At the core of Google’s principle is to “do no evil”. I submit the corollary holds - “do no good”. I submit that Google is fundamentally an automaton. A machine. Differentiating from Google is to differentiate between machine and human. Their greatest strength reveals their greatest weakness.
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Seems like the new “Mood Messages” feature on Skype could just as easily be called “What are you doing?”
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Greg takes Another Look at Google Places Pages and it’s a good one. Realizing there was only so much you could put in a pop-up tabbed window, Google moves to creating a set of place pages at varying levels of geographic scale, from cities through neighborhoods to attractions and finally to businesses themselves. Of course, it’s done in the “Google Way” which is like “when the student is ready, the master will appear” or “when the data is ready, the algorithm shall appear.” And you get content accordingly. Here’s a quick analysis of what content’s available at what levels. Of course, the more you “zoom in” the more detailed information becomes available (cities just don’t have phone numbers). We came at this from the user-generated side with Local Guides (aka Guidespot). We provided tools users could use to generate place pages (or guides) like this to Copper Mountain that included adding descriptions, photos, videos, lists of popular businesses, directions on getting there, and related areas. Of course the “Local Paradox” means that such strategies will continue to be challenged by providing highly relevant pages but generating relatively low traffic. Having more such pages may push the traffic as people realize they will be more rewarded by conducting these kinds of searches. I continue to think that the answer lies somewhere in-between the auto-generated and the human-curated. Apparently you still can’t beat “Cats inside Sinks!” for traffic, though.
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