When the Web came along, the mapping services that came online simply translated the idea of a paper road atlas into its digital equivalent. They added a few enhancements — you could zoom in and out or draw routes on them, but it was fundamentally the same thing. It was still multipurpose, not customized. When mapping services today talk about customization, they mean that you get to draw a blue line on top of their map or add a picture of a pushpin. But the map is always the same for everyone. LineDrive’s most remarkable feature was that it gave everyone their own map, fully customized to their specific situation. It should have been revolutionary, but it turns out that nothing ever came of it, at least in the realm of online driving directions.
It’s always interesting to read about different ways real world data is presented online, if only to remember that it wasn’t always. From Zeit Online:
Green party politician Malte Spitz sued to have German telecoms giant Deutsche Telekom hand over six months of his phone data that he then made available to ZEIT ONLINE. We combined this geolocation data with information relating to his life as a politician, such as Twitter feeds, blog entries and websites, all of which is all freely available on the internet.