Gone Google Goes Google

Gone Google

It will come as no surprise to learn that Google Apps are using Google Maps to help promote their 'Gone Google' campaign. The 'Gone Google' campaign is hoping to persuade businesses to switch to Google Apps by promoting and advertising the number of companies that have already made the switch.

As part of that campaign Google have produced a 'Gone Google' Google Map to show the location of businesses using Google Apps. You can use the map to 'explore ... who's Gone Google near you' and if your business uses Google Apps you can add it to the map.

The use of Google Maps to promote products is becoming more and more common and I guess Google have more right than most to use their own product as a promotion tool. The most effective Google Maps promotion campaigns however tend to be a bit more imaginative with their use of Google Maps.

Zappos received a lot of positive publicity last year for their real-time animated map of people making purchases from their on-line store. Last year also saw the awesome Monopoly City Streets Google Maps game. The game became the most played on-line game of the year and earned a huge amount of publicity for Hasbro for the launch of their new version of the board game.

Google's 'Gone Google' map does a fairly convincing job in conveying the message that a lot of businesses have successfully converted to Google Apps. However it has little of the imagination used in the Zappos and Hasbro campaigns.

So my conclusion on the 'Gone Google' campaign' would be 'nice effort but could try harder'.

Hat-tip: Mapperz

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Google App Engine With Google Maps

Last night Google launched the Google App Engine, which allows developers to run their web applications on Google's infrastructure. The new service allows developers to make use of Google's database BigTable and data store service GFS and will make it easier for developers to scale from one user to one million by taking advantage of Google’s scalable infrastructure.

Perhaps unsurprisingly just hours after its release two Google Maps Mashups have already emerged that have been built on the Google App Engine.

BarBound



BarBound is a social network for San Francisco that allows users to create a plan for a night out based on what their friends are doing. Instead of calling or texting everyone to find out where they are, users can find out ahead of time and plan before leaving home.

BarBound aggregates all the user contributed itineraries and shows the hottest places to go for any particular day along with the all time bars and areas of the city. Therefore before you start planning your night out you can check that evening's hot places on a Google Map. It is also possible to check on the map the hottest bars of all time.

On the simplest level you can use BarBound just to read reviews of bars and find out where they are.

Carpool

Carpool is a nice Google Mapplet that lets you search for a carpool for your daily commute. The application couldn't be easier to use. Users enter start and finish locations of their journey and the times that they wish to travel and the application displays the available carpools for that journey on Google Maps.

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