NY Times Covers Mashups And User-Generated Content

The New York Times has a long article on mashups, the state of online mapping and user-generated content more generally. It’s an overview piece, but does a good job of capturing the fact that online mapping in particular is one of the important trends online: visualizing all sorts of data on a map, whether local businesses, user photographs or other information.

It also discusses how mapping APIs from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft have unleashed third-party developer creativity and that of ordinary people (in My Maps and Live Local Collections). Google’s recent Earth for Enterprise enhancements are also about visualizing corporate or government information on maps.