I found the Vet Locator mashup to be extremely useful. When I take my pets (one dog and two rabbits) on trips, it would make me feel much more safe to know exactly where to find nearby pet hospitals. It is very convenient that the phone numbers are also listed. This application uses Google Maps and data from its own website (www.petsbest.com). The one thing I don't like about the Vet Locator application is that while there is a space for hours and service data, it seemed that most of them are not functioning. Still, a great application to have on a trip!
I just started training for a marathon which, if all goes to plan, I will run in March, 2008 (Napa Valley Marathon). I will be doing lots...and lots...and lots of running! I haven't been running very much recently, so I don't know off the top of my head many good runs. Whenever I used to go for runs around my neighborhood and town, I would either "guesstimate" how many miles I ran, or I would take my car out later and use the odometer to measure the distance. The main problem with this, of course, is that it only really works for road running, and I prefer trail running. Then, I discovered Gmaps Pedometer. This is awesome!! It combines Google Maps with the website's own data, a pedometer function created by a marathon runner. There are so many amazing functions all crammed in to one fantastic website: an elevation marker, calories burned, and I can even export the website to an external website. This will come in especially useful because I am doing the marathon with Team in Training, and have just created my own website; so people who are interested will be able to track my workouts and progress! This is definitely my favorite mashup so far.
The third mashup I really enjoyed is Soup Soup. This takes new stories from a variety of news sources (BBC, CNN, etc.) and combines them with related Wikipedia articles and blogs from Technorati, as well as pictures from Flickr. This is useful because it takes current news stories and makes it really easy to get much more information about them, just by rolling over the main story (a huge list of categorized links appears just to the right, instantaneously, as we discussed in class -- no waiting for the page to load each time I move my mouse!). Also, I can click on the story and be taken to the news outlet's version of the article. Easy to get a lot of information all from one place...what's not to love?
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