Increase Productivity with Google Maps

Productivity with Google Maps? It might sound like a tall order but there’s no doubt the site itself helps us solve everyday practical problems. I often use it to search for businesses in an area, coffee shops to meet people, or simply to get directions to a potential client’s office. It really cuts down the effort of finding new places, especially in a city as densely-packed as London.

The first site I found on this topic was meetinbetween.us. It’s a great site for quickly and democratically deciding where to meet people (especially clients). Notice that after entering the participant addresses you can drag the central location pin, in case it puts you somewhere you don’t like.

mapof.it provides quick access to locations without visiting Google Maps (it also supports other mapping services). Type the name of a location and it’ll take you to the location:

mapof.it/<location name>

There’s also tinyurl-style services for Google Maps. Plazz.me does this very effectively, and also works with Google Gears. This makes it much easier to send Google Maps links to by email.

Team Maps allow you to create collaborative maps with a web page’s visitors. You could use this to work together to annotate a map with historical data, art, videos or locations of people.

Finally, if you’re trying to decide if you should get a taxi between meetings try worldtaximeter.  Of all the sites here worldtaximeter is the one that seems the most promising, especially in business terms: they’re actually talking to taxi companies to get accurate pricing, and this naturally leads to realistic revenue models.  It works with many international locations and quickly shows me how depressingly expensive taxis are in London. Looks like I’ll be getting the bus!

If you’d like to do more with Google Maps check out the awesome Google Maps Mania blog. It has several contributors and is regularly updated.