Straight Up 
Mapping The Web's Future 
Tom Taulli, 09.21.05, 6:00 AM ET 

Veteran technologist Steve Benfield has a unique hobby: He collects antique maps. 

The former CTO of such companies as SilverStream, which was bought by Novell (nasdaq: NOVL - news - people ) in late 2000, and an influential writer and sought-after speaker, says that in the 1500s "the map was the interface for business." An interesting comment, given the popularity of the newly introduced Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people ) Maps. Could we be going back to the future? 

Benfield thinks online maps will increasingly become the interface for the Web. "In building its map application, Google made use of a new way of programming Web applications," said Benfield. "It is known as AJAX. Also, Google created an API, allowing users to implement maps within their own applications. Almost overnight, this has made MapQuest almost irrelevant." 

Those are strong words. But he is backing them up with his latest effort--a company called ClearNova--to create a software development environment to build AJAX applications. 

Interestingly, mapping appears to be one of the reasons Google recently hired Internet pioneer Vint Cerf as its chief Internet evangelist. He believes the Internet is in the process of being geographically indexed (known as "geotagging"), which should allow for much richer applications, such as using your cell phone to find the nearest four-star hotel, get a cab and so on. 

Already, there has been an explosion of Google Map applications. As evidence, take a look at Google Maps Mania. Many of these applications are grassroots efforts, such as celebrity maps, which locate the homes of stars like Brad Pitt and Alyssa Milano, maps to find cheap gasoline and even a map of UFO sitings. 

However, the mapping phenomenon is not just about fun and games. Companies like Salesforce.com (nyse: CRM - news - people ), a leading developer of customer relationship management software, are using Google Maps. Basically, you can map your business contacts and leads. So if you plan a business trip to New York, you can see your contact base around the city and, thus, perhaps set up more meetings. 

Take another company, smugmug.com. Co-founder Chris McAskill is no stranger to the Internet world. During the 1990s, he started Fatbrain.com, an online bookseller of professional and technical titles (he sold the company to barnesandnoble.com in 2000). Smugmug is a photo-sharing site, which has more than 32 million photos. 

It was McAskill's customers that led him to mapping. "Our biggest category is travel," he said. "We noticed our customers uploading maps into their albums to show where they've been. They fumble with Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) Streets and Maps or whatever, but it's not the same as having the actual photo spotted on a map and clicking it to see it big, scrolling, zooming." 

So, in late August, Smugmug used Google Maps to launch a new service, called smugMaps. A user can either add an address or click a spot on the map to create an album. The software can also read the global positioning system (GPS) of a phone to tag a picture. "Honestly," said McAskill, "we love Google Maps, and we're looking for excuses to program them. The idea evolved as we had our fun." 

Someone else having fun is Ivan Mitrovic. He's a programmer in the financial services industry who, over the years, has logged many airline miles. "I use a Treo," said Mitrovic, "but wanted to find ways to use it to find, say, a local restaurant. When I started to look at Google Maps, I knew I had a solution." 

The result was a software service called KMaps. "I guess I wasn't the only one interested in this," said Mitrovic, "because within the first day of posting version 1.0, I got thousands of downloads." 

KMaps is essentially a location-services platform. For example, it has its own API to allow others to create new applications. 

Mitrovic has been quite busy developing his own applications, which he calls KMaplets. Examples include social networking and dating. Along with the Treo, KMaps operates on BlackBerry and Tungsten devices. 

"There is so much location-aware information out there for which online maps provide the natural interface," said Mitrovic. "Mobile online mapping is much more important than the desktop approach, since mobility assumes constant location change. People on the go need to understand what services they can find around their current location. So I think these location-aware services are now in their prime time to be fully commercialized." 

Tom Taulli is an adviser to early-stage companies and is an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California, teaching corporate finance and corporate law. He has written several books, including The Complete M&A Handbook (Random House) and Tapping Into Wireless (McGraw-Hill). He can be reached at [log in to unmask] and has a blog at Taulli.com. 

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Christopher Miller 
Business and Technology Journalist 
Cell: 773-209-5871 
Blog: http://digitaltechnik.blogspot.com/
 
"Impatience never commanded success." --Edwin H. Chapin.

 





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