B. Mann Consulting

I spent a little bit of time tonight plotting markers for the itinerary of my Class Afloat 1993-1994 trip, where I sailed around the North and South Pacific on a tall ship.

The new "My Maps" feature of Google Maps is pretty easy to use, and I've been. Here's the public view of the map so far.

I'm looking forward to do more with this, now that it looks like Scan Cafe (thanks, Darren) can fairly cheaply scan my 600 slides from that trip. It will be great to have a digital representation online at last (it's been 14 years!). I do happen to have a couple of photos up of varying quality tagged with 'class afloat' in my Flickr stream.

Continuing with the geo theme, I've got a post brewing on what Google is doing and what this means for the growth of geo in general. I tried to get momentum for geo-related stuff for this past February's Northern Voice...but I think I was off by at least a year. Herewith some interesting links and examples of what you can now do with Google and maps.

For example, you can add your own business listing to local (and others can even review it, here's the entry for Bryght in Vancouver), and the Google My Maps now makes it really easy to create your own custom maps (e.g. here is my start of Drupal events around the world). My Maps even lets you add "mapplets" -- different layers that folks create -- here's the directory, I'm a fan of the Flickr Mapplet.

I've been looking for a central place that I can trust to "store" my geo-related information. While I still like 43 Places, it's certainly not going to be the only place I put geo-related data. Can I use Google to just act as a giant store for all my geo-related data, and pull it out, remix it, display it elsewhere as needed?

I made this post originally with Blogplanet, a Java app for mobile. It may end up being one of the few mobile apps that I actually keep around.

But what do I mean about mobile apps vs. the mobile web? Well, we talk a lot about web applications, but we usually think about a full desktop and browser supporting them. The mobile web can be thought of as being the web optimized for mobile devices, or we can think about how web-based applications should be evolving to work well with mobile devices.

Then there are mobile apps. Many of them are, indeed, written in Java for that mythical write once run anywhere, although in the mobile world it's more like write once, endlessly test, tweak, and optimize everywhere. The platform specific apps tend to be richer and more polished -- e.g. Series 60 apps for the vast variety of Symbian phones out there. ShoZu is a pretty good example, but even there, there is Seres 60 vXX where incompatibilities creep in.

So, I've been using both the mobile web and mobile apps on my new E61. And the mobile web is winning. Much of that is due to Google.

Gmail? Works great in HTML (*not* mobile) mode using the built in browser. Google Reader has a mobile friendly mode. Google Maps actually doesn't work very well / at all, and I actually used Mapquest. But, then there's a mobile app for this -- downloadable Google Maps for Mobile. Chalk one point up for mobile apps.

So why would I use Gmail instead of the built in email client? Which I could even configure with Blackberry push email? Well, one reason is that Gmail for domains is my main email, and I heavily label / sort my email. On the mobile, using POP3, it just grabs everything.  I don't see myself using the built in email client until Gmail (or another system I use) supports IMAP.

Going forward, the browser on my mobile device will, like the desktop, continue to be the most important application on there. Are you developing for mobile? Well, forget it...you're developing for the web, some of it just happens to have slightly smaller screens.

A very nifty personal (only you get to add content) or shared (allow anyone to update and edit) mapping site powered by Google Maps. Has all the buzzwords the kids like today, from community to tags to reviews. Minus points for no Flickr integration, and for no support of Canada (!).