Yesterday I went to the event “Mobiele toepassingen voor toerisme” (Mobile applications for tourism) in Gent.
Two of the presentations were really interesting: RouteYou and ART.

RouteYou is a Web 2.0 Google Maps mashup site where anyone can create and share routes for hiking or cycling or whatever. I registered and tried creating the walk from the station to the event location.
It was quite easy after a little trial and error. But I couldn’t find a way to add pictures to my POI’s which was quite annoying. (update: in a few weeks it will be possible to add pictures)

The creators of RouteYou are well aware of all the Web 2.0 principles, but I think they should work more on the easy of use of their site. It’s not always obvious enough where to find some functionality or how to do things like publishing a route for instance or what to choose as type of POI (some words are apparently automatically recognized and given an appropriate icon, but there is no list to choose from. It’s probably on purpose and not bad in itself, but it’s not clear).
Anyway I think RouteYou has a lot of potential if they keep working on improving the user experience.

ART (Accessible Relationship Technology) from RVO-Society is a location based PDA application that uses the infrared port to point to an object of interest (for instance on an exhibition) and get information. The nice thing is that you decide when you ask for info and you can get additional info sent by email afterwards if you want. The technology looks quite easy to implement and deploy as well.
They use it at IMEC in Leuven for visitors, so I might want to go and try it out.

Finally a big update to the tango places in Belgium, I think I’m now covering the whole of Belgium:

I added milonga’s in de Kempen (Oud Turnhout and Mol), Limburg (Hasselt), West-Vlaanderen (Brugge en Kortrijk) and Wallonie (Liège). There are probably more places in some of these regions, but it’s a start. Additions and corrections are always welcome!

I finally created a map for milonga’s in Gent in Google Earth or in Google Maps. Alas there’s no high resolution imagery yet, so the sattelite view is worthless…

I also found a nice little video of the open air milonga “Bij Sint Jacobs” during the Gentse Feesten of 2006.

See other maps on my tango website.

I just added La Tangueria and El Carioca to the tango places in Brussels on my tango website.

I also thought it would be cool to use Google Earth’s timeline feature to see milongas appear and disappear over the years. I already have timespan data for many milongas, you can see Illusion and the legendary l’Argonne appear and disappear and all the new milonga’s of this year like La Cellule 133a and the ones mentioned above. Help is appreciated with dates for other milongas and other cities.

Checkout the kmz of tango places in Brussels . You must be using Google Earth 4 version 4.0.2080 or greater. The timeline will appear in the upper right part of your screen. Minimize the range of the time slider for best effect. Slide it back and forth or use the “play” button to the right of the time slider to play the animation.

Here’s my new tango page with Google Earth and Google Maps links to milonga’s (tango places) in Belgium. There are also calendars, mailing lists and pictures as well as my favorite tango music.
The layout is still subject to change while my sister, who is a graphic designer, reviews it and ’suggests’ some changes.

Thank you belgeoblog to write a small piece on my tango maps page!

Update: My tango maps were mentioned on Google Maps Mania!

Cool mashups!

• Planes: 3D flight tracking with Google Earth for a few US airports (LAX, BOS, ORD, ATL and JFK)

• Trains: DartMaps is a very cool mashup of Google Maps and real-time rail times. You can really see the trains moving!

• Automobiles: Traffic jams in cities all over the world with Google Earth. Or parking availability in San Francisco on Google Maps.

Other (near) real-time stuff: Arctic and Antarctic ice flow vectors on Google Earth, Seattle 911 calls on Google Maps, …

Update: a blog with more cool google maps.

Update: Google Earth as a platform for OA geospatial data, scientific data mapped to Google Earth facilitates science reaching the public.

Google Maps for mobile phone
And Opera mini browser for mobile phone