Fun with Mapplets

I was trying to find a mapplet that would show me good places to hike and camp in California; I did find one wiki that was a trail mapper, but there weren't any trails mapped in California at all! So for this exercise, I decided to find what I consider to be a totally useless mapplet. Now, there may be people who would find this information useful, but in conjunction with Google for use by the general public, I fail to see who that would be. Someone out there created a mapplet that shows you the median age of the population of each county in California. Nifty, but silly.

Mashups and mapplets are interesting, and in some cases even useful. There's a website that I like, called Yelp, which combines a search engine and message boards where users can leave reviews and other information with Google Maps. I use it to get information and reviews for all sorts of goods and services. I find that it's most useful for restaurants, but there are listings for clothing boutiques, salons, mechanics, you name it. And you can search by city and state or zip code. Like the Bookwormz site mentioned in my previous post, this site is user-driven, and people can add their own listings of places they like (or don't like). In that sense, mashups can be great. So many people seem to be making these useless mashups though, and the good ones so often get lost in the sea of mediocrity.

Mashups I like

Here are a couple of mashups I found that I thought were kind of cool:

Flickr Sudoku : This mashup lets you play sudoku with tiles that have photographed numbers taken from Flickr. Not very utilitarian, but entertaining definitely.

Bookwormz : Ever wonder where all the independent bookstores in your area are hiding? Look no further! With Bookwormz you can search by zip code, city or state, and users can add stores that they know about but aren't listed. Very cool!