The NYT’s Damon Darlin writes about the expansion of Google Maps-powered mash-ups. Among the projects/sites he mentions are FBOweb.com (flight information), Homepricerecords.com (home sale data), Trulia.com (real estate listings) and Google Maps Mania, which attempts to track the growing ranks of Google map mash-ups and reportedly adds about a dozen new sites each day to its listings.
Darlin quotes Jef Poskanzer, an independent Google Map developer as saying that “It still takes a programmer to write these kinds of Google maps, but it is easier because you can go to another site and copy the code.” And, says Darlin:
It just got a lot easier. A company started by Marc Andreessen, a co-founder of Netscape, hopes to democratize map mash-ups even more. He created Ning.com, which automates the tools needed to create a Google-based map so almost anyone can make one.
Once you have registered for “developer status,” the site copies the code behind a particular Web site you want to imitate, allowing you tweak it and make it your own. In less than five minutes, you could have the Mung Bean Salad Restaurant site up and running.Darlin also considers Google’s strategy in making its Google Maps API widely available.
Google recognized while developing the mapping feature that it would not have the time or the desire to create a host of special interest maps. Yet having numerous mash-ups would serve Google’s strategy of becoming the ubiquitous organizer of the world’s information - hence its openness…
…Google’s openness to the use of its maps does have limits, though. Once a mash-up turns into a large-scale commercial enterprise, Google looks to share in the revenue. That is happening at Trulia; Google lawyers are trying to negotiate a royalty agreement. “At the moment it is free,” Mr. Flint said, “and we are taking advantage of it.”Posted by Mitch Shapiro at 2:37 PM | Print | Comments (1)
According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the MPAA’s efforts to revive the broadcast flag are foundering in Congress. Despite MPAA’s initial success in gaining support for the flag in the House, a letter-writing campaign spurred by the EFF seems to have spooked some members.
In a bit of legislative gymnastics on the Senate side, the MPAA had hoped to attach a flag amendment to the Reconciliation bill, and if that doesn’t succeed, run a risky last-minute gambit of attaching the amendment to the bill on the Senate floor. But it only takes one Senator to challenge a non-budgetary item attached to the bill, and if the parlimentarian agrees to the challenge, then a super-majority, or 60 senators have to vote to keep the amendment attached. Long odds for the MPAA.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:51 AM | Print | Comments (1)
Like Rupert Murdoch before her, eBay’s CEO Meg Whitman said that VoIP will be free within five years, according to this Business Week TechBeat piece by Rob Hof. “Whitman admitted that rampant competition no doubt will drive what little Skype, or anyone else, can charge for Internet phone calls to zero within a few years.”
So what about the $4.1 billion eBay paid to buy VoIP pioneer Skype? Well, at least for the time being, Skype’s business is booming, Whitman said. And in any event, eBay has lots of plans to monetize the service including integrating voice connections into all of its sites, including not only eBay but also Rent.com, Shopping.com, all of its 150 Kijiji classifed-ad sites and PayPal. Moreover, eBay in working on a pay-per-call advertising service that will use Skype.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 7:19 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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