My ignorant muggle friends often ask me — what the hell your status message means. I return a smile, and ask them to figure it out. Days later they come and are super excited after they have nailed down the mystery of my favorite map on planet and my favorite book.
I think Google Latitude is closest to Marauder’s Map but it sure is not that fun to use — someday, somebody will make it fun to use as well. I can only imagine when in days to come technology will enable us to exactly pin point where a certain person his located on the data received from the cell-phone in his pocket — if he chooses to share that is — To me that will my biggest fantasy come alive.
Even before I’ve heard of Google Latitude, I had discussed this idea of tracking a person’s movement on map using cell phone signals, which ofcourse attributes to Marauder’s Map, with some friends. We were sold on it and wanted to write a app based on Maps API which can simulate this. But ofcourse, then came Latitude which we all now use — really cool huh — how a fantasy become a reality.
We’re now planning to write a script which will make the UI look more interesting. Some ideas are that friends should be represented by a GIF of some animal, the map should actually look like ‘The map from medieval ages,’ the dot should actually be a shoe, a paw or something cooler.
With the power of Google’s cloud and infrastructure, I think it is virtually possible for anyone out there to create a new app or use one of Google’s API to write something interesting. What I love the post is that Google lets you run your app on their infrastructure using App Engine “https://appengine.google.com/”
So if you’ve an idea which you think can be translated into an application — all you need to do is either learn some coding skills yourself, or talk to your eng friend who can write it for you — or talk to me. Most important thing is how cool is your idea and you pursue it to ensure it sees light of the day.
Get started!
Popularity: 6% [?]