New interactive map brings life to Review website
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The Half Moon Bay Review has partnered with a local firm that has created an interactive online mapping system that is interesting now and could be amazing in the future.
The map comes courtesy of GatheringPoint, a Half Moon Bay company located doors away from the Review on the city’s Main Street.
The partnership began when GatheringPoint principal Spencer Nassar walked into the Review office and shared a demonstration with Managing Editor Clay Lambert. He offered to share the service for free in exchange for the chance to work with his first newspaper client.
The map is essentially a Google map with a series of overlays scraped from existing databases. Users can see YouTube videos that have been tagged in the community, read their neighbors’ latest tweets, found out where the art galleries are, and track real-time traffic reports, among many other things. In the near future, the newsroom plans to begin geotagging stories so that readers can find the location of news events as points on the map.
The Review is also planning on pinpointing interesting places noted in stories. For example, the newspaper is planning to include information on the map that ties to an upcoming story on safety concerns at various area beaches. The map could even be used to pinpoint advertisers who might be offered a spot on the map for a fee or as a special value added to their print advertising.
The Review is calling the project “Walkabout ,” a name that hints at the fact that readers can walk to areas on the map. It also dovetails with the branding for the newspaper’s popular Talkabout Web forum. Walkabout went live on July 21 and is already generating some buzz around town.