Multimap on MSN Local
A great new Multimap implementation has just gone live on UK MSN Local. See http://local.uk.msn.com/
Basically you can do a search for a property and see the results on a map, or use the “Explore Area” feature to see a map of an area with information about local amenities (e.g. schools and gyms) and data such as crime levels and constituencies:
I love the use of heat maps to display crime levels:
I’m in one of those hot red patches!
This is a really well designed application that lets you explore a large amount of local information.
Mapperz has done a great blog post on this.
Tim I agree the maps look good and have useful information but we now come down to the old question…how accurate is the data or, to put it another way, how can we trust what is shown? Example, searching in my area came up with lots of data about schools, which was useful but….some were 2 miles from the real location! That’s a long way off if you are looking to relocate and trying to base decisions on where to live by choosing a school with a good score!
This begs the question, if we know this location to be wrong, how can we trust the other information – are you really in a ‘high crime’ area, does the granularity of the data give the most accurate information?
Providing information by way of mashups is all well and good but we have to remember that the underlying data should be fit for purpose otherwise we are in danger of loosing the confidence of the people we’re trying to empower or, worst still, affecting someone’s life irrevocably with inaccurate information!
Hi Tim,
Live the bing maps of crime data. We did a little heatmap for councils which has been helpful. http://heatmap.egovtoolkit.co.uk
We took the place survey data to plot how each council has done.