Quakr - done by the big boys

So, some 3 years after we started this here Quakr thing, Google Maps and MS Bing have taken our idea and 'done it'. With their respective street view bubbles and geotagged photos from flickr, Picasa and Panoramio, they have machine managed them into 'place'. Exactly as we imagined all those moons ago, only with bigger resources than we were ever able to muster in our spare time. Perhaps we should have really gone for it and quit our proper jobs and then been bought out by them thar big boys, but perhaps we've had our fun and we should focus on doing something new...

Bing with street images.
Geoblogger talks about Gmap's thing.
Oxford's Carfax Tower with pictures machined into place.

ps - If it doesn't kill you it makes you stronger. And if it kills you you're dead and don't care anyways. So get on with it.

links for 2009

an uncoordinated set of links from the recent blogworld...

A google street view bike - here.
Home made street view - here.
GMaps onto android - here.
Semantic web dog food - here.
Semantic POI's for Mobile Phones - here.
A competition for Geo stuff - here.
GMaps 'more than real-estate' - here.
A cool tool for 3d environment construction - here.
A non-town in GMaps? - here.
Real Time GPS / GPS++ uses known stationary objects? - here.

google does us over

Your pictures and views thereof : http://google-latlong.blogspot.com/2009/07/zoom-photo-navigation-in-street-view.html

Timeline : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FOR0fPTx-os
Zoom, Tilt, Rotate : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3ytS7fHJf0

Actually, it's not quite all dead for us... we're still in a different focus space from Google - they show maps with the occasional photo, we want(ed) to show photo's with the occasional map tile for context.

Greasemonkey scripts make Quakr simple

Today, due to popular demand, Quakr launch 2 Greasemonkey extensions for Firefox to make visiting the Quakr World easier.

The flickr script enhances your experience of flickr by inserting a link to Quakr whenever you browse to a geotagged photo.

The Google Maps script allows you to navigate around in Google Maps and then jump straight to that location within Quakr. This means that you can search Google Maps for something like Tower Bridge, London and then click straight through from there to view the same scene in Quakr.

It's really easy to set up. The instructions and scripts are on the Quakr website, and if you are too eager to go and read those, the scripts are here:

Flickr to Quakr

Google Maps to Quakr

We would love to hear your feedback:
* do these scripts do what you want?
* are there any other Greasemonkey scripts you would like written?
* have you written any yourself?
* do you also find it strange that your CV could ever contain a word like 'Greasemonkey' and that it might actually enhance your job prospects?

Have fun.