Just a quick post on something I discovered earlier today. So I was looking for a chemist close by and as is pretty much par for the course these days google maps is the place to start (Sorry Yellow pages). Anyway, I punched “chemist” into the google machine and it returned this:

Nothing revolutionary there,  just the location of the Chemist. Then I wanted to get an idea of how far it was, based on a landmark I knew so I punched in “7eleven” which I knew was somewhere around there and the google machine returned this:

Location of 7eleven

Again, nothing revolutionary, just the location of the 7eleven that is close by.   But here’s where it gets awesome. I then clicked back in my browser to get the details of the chemist again and the mighty google machine, as I now call it, returned this:

The Awesome!

And that people is FREAK’N AWESOME!!! Google has remembered that I searched for something else close by and even though I pushed back has gone ahead and positioned it on the map for me.  Now some would say “big deal” But what IS awesome, is that someone at google has said “Wouldn’t it be good if we showed what someone searched close by even if they pushed back” and then went ahead and implemented it.

I didn’t ask google to do this for me and I don’t imagine it’s requested that much, if at all, but when it’s just there, it makes for a very nice piece of usability that I didn’t even know I wanted.

Bravo Google, Bravo!  You should be very proud of yourself, you can have an extra helping of desert tonight!

Have you discovered any nice pieces of usability that you didn’t know you wanted? And if so what were they?

It’s pretty rare for me to get excited about much on the internet these days but coming from a mapping background this Ted talk by Blaise Aguera y Arcas’ blew me away. Like everyone else, I was amazed when Google Street View came to Australia as it really changed the way we consume maps online and on our mobile). Now, it looks like Microsoft is going to use their photosynth technology (which is super cool as well if you want to check it out) to allow you to not only go to street-view level, but then explore inside buildings using crowd-sourced images from sites like Flickr. This I can see could be useful, but they then demonstrate a live video overlay which, kudos to them is pretty cool technology-wise- I’m just at a loss as to how I would use it.

There was something voyeuristic about Google street-view with countries like Germany actually taking a stand and banning it, but this development goes far beyond that. I think we may see other countries joining Germany, but for me… I think it’s awesome.