Webware

Fatdoor is an upcoming social network that's all about location. Instead of creating your network of friends based on interests or real-life relationships, the creators of Fatdoor want you to use the service to get a better feel for your neighborhood and what's going on around you.

The system works by slurping in local business and residential listings, and placing them on a Microsoft Virtual Earth map. While the businesses get pinpoint-accuracy, residential listings are clumped together in a general area, until users decide to claim the house or building as their own. Each user gets their own profile where they can list their interests, both generally and with regard to things in and around the neighborhood.

One of the key uses of Fatdoor is interacting with local businesses. The service aggregates reviews of local establishments from several services, including Yelp, so you can browse through reviews and leave your own. Here's where things get a little tricky--users of these other sites won't be able to see your comments. In fact, only other Fatdoor users will be able to see your take. The system works a little bit like coComment, which Webware reviewed last month.

In addition to restaurant reviews, Fatdoor has built in its own services, like an events planner, local interest groups, and driving directions. Some of the services, like the local events listings, are aggregated from third-party services, but the rest are built in-house and fed by Fatdoor members.

To keep track of all this activity, Fatdoor's welcome page has a series of activity feeds on it, listing the most recent groups and events. It feels a little bit like Facebook, albeit a little less comprehensive. Users also get their own wall to put up notices, called "shout outs," which can double as discussion threads.

Short of block parties--and friendly knocks to tell people to turn down their subwoofers--it's definitely not easy to meet your neighbors. Fatdoor is a very ambitious service that's trying to solve that, albeit using the Internet. Creator Raj Abhyanker explained to me that he knows the barrier to entry is high, since users need to be real people with a real address, but he thinks they can gain a lot more out of a social network if it's local and "face to face." The service is still a couple of months from making its launch; look for it near the end of summer.

Here at O'Reilly's Where 2.0 conference, one of the few and the proud gadgets on the exhibition floor is 3Dconnexion's SpaceNavigator mouse. Calling it a mouse might be an insult though, it feels more like an airplane steering yolk.

Launched in November, the mouse integrates with big Web maps services like Google Maps and Microsoft's Live Maps. Users can navigate the maps with very little effort, pushing, pulling, and twisting the circular handle. I spent about five minutes with it on the show floor, and walked away from the booth dangerously close to purchasing one.

The mouse works on Mac, Windows, and Linux. 3DConnexion also claims the mouse integrates with 100 other 3D applications, including Adobe's Photoshop CS3.

The SpaceNavigator retails at two price points: $59 and $99. The more expensive version is actually the same piece of hardware, you just get extended support options and commercial licensing.

Imagine if you will a room full of several hundred developers, journalists, and curious onlookers sitting together listening to the sounds of monkeys. That was the scene here at Where 2.0 during a demo for Wild Sanctuary, a project that presents sound clips of nature as a layer on Google Earth.

Users can explore various sounds, and see their placement and contextual information on the map. What's interesting about these "soundscapes" is that they can show the difference in an area before and after environmental impact both with visual maps and sound as. Several examples were given show instances where a once lush diversity of animal noises became quiet, following climate change, human settlements, logging, etc.

Wild Sanctuary joins several other environmentally focused Google maps mash-ups, including one that teaches plate tectonics, another that tracks Orca whale sounds, and Greenpeace's map of human impact on the ocean.

Trulia is a real estate search and information service. Users can search for real estate by zip code, or by filling in various search parameters like size, cost, and building type. Trulia also integrates several social features like a way to track buying trends, and a real-estate focused question and answer service.

Today, they've teamed up with Stamen Design, the same folks who do the eye candy for Digg Labs, to create a really neat way to look at housing trends called HindSight. Their new tool is a mix between historical real estate data, and a heat map to show which properties are hot. When combined, it's a very interesting way to watch growth trends and movement in residential areas.

Users can track the spread of housing developments and popularity in various U.S. cities over time. The team designed Hindsight as a way to spark discussion, and get people thinking in new ways about residential regions and population trends. Even if you're not looking to buy a house in one of these areas, this stuff is very fun to watch.

This morning Google added Street View, an all new way to browse Google Maps. Launching with five major cities, Street View joins satellite and traffic maps as new ways to view geography. When in an area with a Street View, users can toggle the mode to navigate within a 3-D photograph using their mouse or keyboard shortcuts. Users get their own "person" that shows which direction you're looking at.You can also just click and drag them to new locations. The experience is a mix between Quicktime's VR environment and Microsoft Live Labs' PhotoSynth project since users can zoom in closer in any shot. Google describes it as "immersive photography."

Google also announced the launch of Mapplets, which joins the My Maps feature they launched in early April. With Mapplets, users can create their own maps mash-ups, which can be combined and toggled on and off. The example shown at this morning's press demo was a Chicago transit map, which could be mixed up with other maps shared or uploaded to the service.

I'm here at O'Reilly's Where 2.0 conference here in San Jose, which is about to kick off. At last night's Launch Pad event, four new services launched.

Fatdoor made its official alpha launch. Originally slated for a release at last month's Web 2.0 Expo, the service opened its doors for people interested in testing the service on their way to making it publicly available. The service touts itself as being a "neighborhood-based community social network," and a place to find local people or events. We'll try to get a hands-on later this week.

Dopplr, like Fatdoor is a location-oriented social network. It's currently in private beta.

GeoCommons is a social map creation and exploration service. Users can browse and create maps filled with various data. Like Swivel (which launched their geomaps last night), there are all sorts of data sets that make a little more sense when you see them geographically instead of on a chart.

UpNext is a mix between an events service and Google Earth. Users can control a 3-D map, and see where events are visually. The service is currently in an invite-only beta.

The conference is about to kick off. Stay tuned.

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 set has geographic information like city/country names and ZIP codes. Users can also grab any of the data files and use them to make their own creations.

Swivel is one of the six services participating in the Launch Pad event at O'Reilly's Where 2.0 conference that kicks off later tonight.

Previous Swivel coverage:
Data made fun with Swivel
Web 2.0 Expo: Launchpad Day 2