geo

Heavy, the online video site with a distinct focus on the Jackass demographic, announced Tuesday that it will be using the IP Intelligence technology from Digital Element in order to "geotarget" its advertisements, language, and video content based on where a visitor's IP address is located.

This means a couple of different things. One, by knowing where its visitors come from, Heavy can run locally targeted advertisements, which can make it a more appealing buy for advertisers. This, as we've seen with many of Google's locally-oriented applications, can be very lucrative.

And two, imagine the … Read more

Today, Swivel is adding a new geography view to its data-sharing service. Users will now be able to view data containing city or country information in a variety of different ways, using integrated Google Maps.

Geographic data is represented as a heat map, which will display data as darkened and lightened areas--like you'd see on a weather map. You can also turn your own data set into a one of these maps.

Like other data sets on the service, users will still be able to compare multiple sets of data at the same time, as long as the data … Read more

Nearbie is a new social bookmarking service that lets users broadcast status updates, and keep tabs on friends. Nearbie goes one step further than some other sites that do this (see Dodgeball, Groovr and Jaiku) to show you how user-submitted material is connected to people or places in your geographical location. Users can submit all sorts of things such as event notices, local landmarks, personal stories, and pictures. It's a lot like a blog, but with far more structure. The hope is that when enough people begin to use the service, users will be able to discover more about … Read more

Locr is a new photo hosting service that promises to make geo-tagging your photos a little easier. After uploading photos, users need to simply add a zip code or city name to set a longitude and latitude for their shots. Users can then browse other geo-tagged photos by click-dragging a Google Map.

Is this different from what Flickr offers? Yes, but without a Web-based batch uploader or a way to tag landmarks, Locr comes up short.

Locr's Web interface is really easy to use for individual uploading and geo-tagging, but it just doesn't work with multiple photos. That … Read more

TagMaps is an exploratory mashup/science project from Yahoo Research Berkeley that mixes Yahoo Maps with Flickr's geo-tagging features to create a neat-looking photo browser. Locations show up on the map as large tags, and mousing over one will populate the corresponding Flickr photos to the right. Clicking any of these photos will give you the title and photographer information, along with the option to visit the photo page on Flickr.

What's really cool is that you can toggle between day and night modes. Both the map and the photos change dramatically depending on which mode you're … Read more

Designed to provide jet-setters with independently produced video content about international destinations, GeoBeats is a new travel site with professional-quality movies about subjects from the Finnish delicacy lamprey to social etiquette in Hong Kong. All the videos on the site are hosted and filmed by relative unknowns, but the movies are surprisingly well produced. Split up by topic, the videos attempt to cover basics like public transportation, seasonal festivals, and local culture. The site has launched with only a dozen countries, not as many as competitor TurnHere (see our coverage here). However, there are already more than 100 movies available … Read more