Geo-Tagging

As I was reading today's post on 10,000 words about maps and YouTube, I got to thinking about how online newspapers could better utilize tools like Google Maps. A lot of multimedia sites, now, use something called Geo-Tagging. For example, I use Flickr for my photography and I geo-tag some of my photos, placing them on a map exactly where I took them. That way, when anyone wants to browse something like photos I took in Europe, they can literally click on Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower or the Colosseum, and all my photos taken there will pop up. Of course, that's just with Flickr, but by making a custom map using Google Maps, you can literally geo-tag anything, even news stories.

In class we were talking about ways to make the Atlantic more relevant locally, and I was thinking that an interactive map (probably relegated to a side-bar somewhere on the site) might be a cool way to get people interacting with the site and finding news that's relevant to them. As it turns out, the Associated Press already has a Google Map, and I'm sure other news resources do as well. Maybe something like this could be incorporated onto The Atlantic's site so that after getting the national headlines, people could literally zoom in on their state (even on their neighborhood) and see what's going on near them.

To get an idea of some of the Google Maps already out there, check out the Google Maps Directory.