I'm still thinking about Don Marinelli's presentation at the Carnegie Mellon Entertainment Technology Center. He talked about total immersion in space and time, I couldn't help but think of recent offerings in providing map info tools. Here's something that can be done, check out this video of Seattle highlighting tourist destinations. I think that comes close to the the ultimate goal of show-me-where-I-want-to-go request. I think, perhaps, it's too much information. I wouldn't mind some line drawings versus, full color representation, or a text only segment. One of the things I think Marinelli gets wrong or ignores is the popularity of games that have less information such as Kingdom of Loathing.
I've played with the Google Map API and even started making a map. But the javascript was a little non-intuitive for me and gets a little unpredictable, although I do like the debugger thing that tells you where your mistake is. Undoubtedly the debugger method could be an education model of the future (or the past, if you take it as a modern day equivalent of a knuckle rapping ruler). I'm not familiar with Yahoo, and have only a glancing familiarity with ARCview and ARC GIS products.
I've used flickr, and put in the greasemonkey script so it's easy to do the flickrgoogle maps.
Have been checking out Map Hub, which covers just the City of Pittsburgh for now, but will move outside. The benefit of Map Hub is that it's easy to add extra information. I'll have to become much more competent with the Google API to add information as easily. I also like Map Hub's tag line. "Shared Urban Storytelling."
I believe Don M. was making a point that machines are always falling short of reality and that when faced with phenomena such as the wind on your face, you should appreciate it as something in which machines fall short. But we should open ourselves to the possibilties of Nature. We then have many tools upon which we may improvise a responses, computer I/O devices being just one of them. Poetry comes to mind.
We shall not cease from exploration—T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets Posted by mastr at September 25, 2005 11:06 AM
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.