Jackson Miller

I wrote yesterday about the location-based tagging app I would like to see come to mobile phones. Today I saw Rex posted about Google Maps having a new collaborative editing feature for custom maps. I decided to create an East Nashville map showing all the local businesses. I got the map started and opened it up to Laura Creekmore’s East Nashville Google Group.

After a few hours a handful of people have added entries to the map. I have tried to apply consistent icons based on the type of business (is it a restaurant that serves booze or a bar that serves food?).

I think the results are pretty close to what I think location based tagging would look like. Combining a map like this with location based tagging (and possibly location based rating) would kick some serious ass.

Check out the East Nashville map:

View Larger Map

Damn I wish I wasn’t so busy. I mean, I love what I am doing, but I am too busy to start another project. But…

If I was going to start a new project, I would enter an application in the Android Developer Challenge. What would my application be? Location tagging.

I have been hot on location based services for 2 years (still a vapor vertical market). Location tagging is a great way to get the ball rolling, and I think it would be really useful.

Basically, users would simply open the app and enter some tags. Using the GPS chip on the phone, those tags would be sent to a central server with the Lat/Long coords. Likewise, a user should be able to open the app on their phone and see a tag cloud based on popularity and distance. The third piece would be a web app that ties to Google Maps and overlays location tags on a map for an area.

I think this would be a really neat app and should be relatively simple to build. It is nothing more than a web service for collecting information, an Android client that talks to the web service, and a GMaps mashup for browsing. The most difficult part of the coding would be the Lat/Long distance calculations (which I don’t expect would be too hard to get close enough).

So there it is, a simple idea that could be a contender in the Android Developer Challenge with a solid implementation. I just wish I had the time to do it.

Note: iPhones need not apply since there is no internal GPS chip. I must admit, Android could make HTC hardware very appealing to me.