Finally! Google Maps Helps me Find a Restroom

Women everywhere will appreciate this. We are always aware in our travels of where the free and clean restrooms are, but now you can find them using Google Maps.
SitOrSquat.com

The wonderfully named SitOrSquat.com is a website and mobile application that has mapped over 25,000 public restrooms. In their own words SitOrSquat "is dedicated to telling you where the closest public restroom is and whether or not that restroom is worthy of your bare bottom."

Users can rate the restrooms, view photos, read reviews...you can even create a list of your favorite toilets. Even though this is a US based application, I would flag the restroom that I visited in Eutopia in the Northland and Kawa Kawa's art deco toilets.

It also has a iPhone application. Turns out New York has been documenting restrooms for a bit longer. Here's their map: NYRestroom.com.

Hookup Maps - A Mashup of Craigslist Personals and Google Maps

So it turns out there is a mashup application out there to let you know who is single in your neighborhood. Beyond the obvious (that as a single woman I don't want random men to know where I live before vetting them) it might actually be helpful. I'm thinking of my own neighborhood where there are TONS of townhouses and apartment complexes in a small area. I walk by them on the way to the metro, and think, "I bet the love of my life lives in one of these apartments...how would I ever meet him"?

HookupMaps is a mix of Craigslist personal ads and Google Maps - showing you where the people wanting to "hook up" in your city are. I wonder if it pulls from the sexually scarey "random encounters" section, "the LTR section" or some other section. It will not only tell you how many single people there are in your neighborhood, but it will also tell you the age and gender of each poster.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

The site also lets you filter your searches based on a few criteria: m4m, m4w, w4w, w4m, and whether the post contains a picture. You can search by city, neighborhood, or, by keyword. Here in DC maybe that means you can search for "liberal" or "democrat" or "lawyer" if that's your preference.

There's a different twist on staving off movie watching loneliness that I discovered while at Pop!Tech. It's a blog called "White Hat Stories", where a poster announces that they will be wearing a white hat and watching a movie at X movie theater in case anyone wants to join them for company.

It's interesting to see how people are using technology to encourage face-to-face interactions - like joining groups on Facebook or Meetup.com

Starbucks Closings on Google Maps

Normally, I wouldn't necessarily care if Starbucks closes stores -there are SO many of them! But it's one of the places that I can find soy free food to eat, and unfortunately by looking at this Google Maps mashup of the Starbucks closures, I can tell that the one next to my office is going to close. :-(

Google Maps Now with Walking Directions

Finally! You can get walking directions in Google Maps. Here's an example of Google walking directions - notice that in a car I could go that way because of the one way street.

Wearable Computers Get Much Needed Infrastructure

Many of you know that I'm a wearable computer geek, and one of the findings from my graduate thesis was that wearable computers will not be adopted by consumers until there is ubiquitous wireless internet. Well folks, that might be just around the corner. An article in the Washington Post Express mentions that Sprint Nextel Corp has successfully garnered the funding to build a Wimax network that will provide free wireless access regardless of the hardware you have in your hand. If you're device is wireless enabled, you'll be able to pick up a signal.

If you combine this with Google's announcement of it's integration of Google Street view and it's maps that means that in the not-so-distant future the following scenario is possible:

[scene]
A man on travel in San Diego, CA walks down the street with sunglasses on, and from his perspective, he's seeing images of the buildings that he's walking past streetview in route to the new restaurant that his friend recommended (directions provided by Google). He stops when the photo displayed by his glasses matches the building in front of him, and his handheld vibrates displaying a coupon for 10% off his meal.
[end scene]

It was a scenario that my focus group dreamed up and GPS based mobile advertising is a reality, you can get microoptical video sunglasses to go with your iPhone, and once Wimaz is rolled out, we'll be able to experience what seemed like science fiction only 5 years ago.

Google now provides public transit info

Not for the DC metro area, but I suppose we have Wmata for that. However, when I'm traveling and want to take public transit, the new Google Transit tool that is integrated into Google maps is really helpful.

Googlemaps Street view!!!

Ok. This new feature by Google is amazing. If you search in Denver, CO or San Francisco, CA using Google Maps there is a "Street View" feature...then you move the little person and you can see photos of the street with a 360 view. It's amazing!!!