There's also <a href="http://www.zvents.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.zvents.com/</a><p>Jesus, this is ANOTHER idea I didn't implement (I had this same idea 2 years ago) I was too worried about the details and ran out of steam when I should have just cranked out the code.<p><p>
Linux support is coming very soon, we're just having a hard time finding enough computers to test on. Thanks for trying it out,<p>Raj Advani
Lead Engineer, UpNext
Why is 3D better? I'm not Superman. When I want to go to a local business, I don't <i>fly</i> there.<p>It always amazes me how geeks will ooh and aah over any 3D interface. But the three-dimensional world is extremely inconvenient for conveying most sorts of information -- there's occlusion and perspective, which hide and distort information. The one thing a 3D map does convey is the height of buildings, and sometimes the shape, but it's not clear that this is worth the costs. <p>Even if it were true that 3D gave you more useful information, there are no interface standards for 3D navigation.<p>Full disclosure: I work for Upcoming (<a href="http://upcoming.yahoo.com/" rel="nofollow">http://upcoming.yahoo.com/</a>), also in the events and local search business. But honestly, this isn't me slamming the competition; I have ranted about 3D interfaces for years. I think UpNext is impressive, but maybe there's more appropriate uses for this technology than local search.
<i>"... he map stays current in three ways (maybe more but this is what I get): data feeds supplied to UpNext, manual entry by the UpNext team and by user updates. Did you notice that the pizzeria on 48th and 2nd avenue is closed? Go edit the record which creates a community of users to help keep the tool updated. ..."</i><p>One area where this application kills printed maps is a concept called <i>"ground-truth"</i>. Ground truth is where you manually check that what is on the map really exists on the ground. It's boring, time consuming but imperative to get right to make something useful. The web2 interaction, "Oh this shop has shut-down, I better add a tag and new description" solves this problem somewhat. <p>Nicely executed Rav.
Very cool! Can't wait to have Turku in there ;) <<a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&q=turku,+finland&ie=UTF8&ll=60.456879,22.2686&spn=0.082611,0.238266&z=12&iwloc=addr&om=1>" rel="nofollow">http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&t...</a>;<p>What I was immediately missing was better keyboard navigation -- how about copying something like Doom (or whatever the kids are playing these days)? I mean a way to at least "turn your head" and go up/down directly from the keyboard.<p>Maybe it's just me though -- might be that people prefer mouse navigation.
Didn't work with my video card.<p>Interesting that you chose Java. I haven't looked at web 3-d technologies in a while, but was the thought that VRML was too clunky or outdated for the users to like? I guess you could also create micro-videos and serve them up and cache them a la google maps, but that would require a real google-like file system.
Um, yeah. So I granted the thing trust and it CRASHED my computer. As in, mouse froze, then unfroze, but one of my video cards was down (2 screens blank) - nothing ever appeared in the window. And both monitors stayed blank until a restart. Not ever going <i>there</i> again.