Mapplets, Platforms and Launches! Oh my...

I posted my paper on The Economics of Mashups a while back. It spoke about the exciting new world of platforms for small guys like us. But live from the field here is the downside, compound bugs and QA complexity (btw- the upside is far greater imho).

When you're building a new experimental app on a new experimental platform you have compound bug opportunities with the extra boost that you don't know whose bug it is. For example, we're very excited about Google's Mapplets launch and we even get to be one of the launch partners. We made two new apps that we're really excited about which take a little piece of Platial and let folks use it right from Google. The only problem is... They don't work this morning. They worked last night at 12:30 am but please don't try to use them now. Our servers may be slow, a query may be untuned, their time outs may be aggressive but either way we're having trouble communicating and the result is a horrendous user experience.

All the folks who created mapplets without data entry and kept things simple seem are fairing well. For us, user contribution is the most important thing in the world so we couldn't imagine deploying without that! We'll get it sorted out, I'm entirely confident but I wanted to share the new apps and some humble wisdom (frustration) from the mashup perspective. We noticed that the georss reader is also having trouble with their data entry portions (Thats a cool app too but dont try to use it just now).

We're excited about the apps you'll be able to use real soon:

Been There
Been there is our feature that lets you say where you've been on Platial and see who else has been there. Now through the mapplet you can enter places you've been, see who else has been there and embed your "Been There" map anywhere on the web.

And Popular Places Nearby
Our slider snazziness on any Google map so you can easily find popular places nearby.

Comments

[Karen Garvin]

I’ve just added a Platial map to my blog. I’m curious to see how this map will develop as my readers add their own places to my map. I'm looking forward to trying out the new map tools.