This program uses the GeoURL database to identify web sites located in a given geographic region, then displays them on a Google Map. To use this program, start by zooming in to a specific region. Sites will start appearing when the map scale is about 50 km. New sites will appear as you scroll the map. If there are more than 200 sites in the area, the map will display a random selection of about 200 sites. Zoom in further to see the others, as more sites are displayed at the 10 km and 2 km scales.
Troubleshooting: This program uses Javascript to download data from GeoURL and combine it with map imagery from Google. It works best on a recent browser (Mozilla, Firefox, IE 6) with a fast Internet connection. Some specific caveats: The map may hang temporarily while processing large amounts of data, e.g., if we're in an urban area with hundreds of sites at 50 km scale. Also, this program uses lots of memory, and garbage collection doesn't seem to keep up with it. (Who knows, there might even be memory leaks!) Ideally the program should try to explicitly deallocate memory; but for the time being, just remember to periodically restart the browser.
Related work: Leigh Dodds, Tatsuhiko Miyagawa, Mark McLaren, Blogwise Maps.
--Yi-Kai Liu, 8/15/05. E-mail: y9liu [at] cs [dot] ucsd [dot] edu