Database Reference
In-Depth Information
FIGURE 3.10
Hotsptr: a typical mash-up using Google Maps; this one indicates Wi-Fi hot
spots (mostly) in the United States.
see what their house looked like from space: It brought mapping to the masses. For a
short time at least, it was the talk of the Web. Mapping had been published by com-
panies such as Multimap, as well as by the main search engine providers—Google,
Yahoo!, and Microsoft—before the creation of Google Earth, but it was not until
Google Earth made mapping cool that the general public began to become really
aware of online maps. Within quite a short time, the popularity of mapping, com-
bined with the publication of mapping resource Application Programming Interfaces
(APIs) by the search engine providers, enabled users not only to view existing data
but also to add their own layers of information. Mapping and GI joined Web 2.0,
resulting in the creation of a large number of mashups. Here, the emphasis was often
on either taking data from publically available sources or using data generated by
the community and displaying it against a map backdrop: Hotspotr (Figure 3.10) is
a typical example that shows the location of Wi-Fi hot spots in various cities around
the world, although mostly in the United States.
Another factor that was helping to make the general public more aware of GI
during the first decade of the twenty-first century was the rise of devices that included
GPS. Although GPS devices had been available from at least the mid-1980s, it was not
until 2000 onward that applications such as car-based satellite navigation really took
off; toward the end of the decade, GPS began to appear as a feature on most smart
