Geospatial aggregation: what's going on in your neighborhood? Mar12 '08
A new way of aggregating content is gaining popularity, and you may hear it from the blogger sitting right next to you.
It's called geospatial aggregation (thanks for that wording Mark), and although that sounds complex, it simply refers to the physical location that content is posted from. It also refers to physical locations represented in the content - for example, a news story about a fire in Los Angeles.
Providing geographic details for your content allows other services to enhance their application with relevant information based on proximity.
Real-world uses
Here's a simple example.
You live in Chicago. A blogger (whom you do not know) also lives in Chicago. He posts a great article on a tech topic that you're interested in, except you don't know this, because A) you don't know the person, and B) you don't know (or are not subscribed to) the site he posted it to.
There are two reasons why you might want to be alerted that this article exists:
- It's about a topic you're interested in.
- The author is from your area, meaning you could connect with him in other ways to further enhance the topics you're interested in.
But how will you find this article and author?
If the article is "tagged" with geodata, a handy service like outside.in, or EveryBlock can ascertain it's relevance to you.
Yahoo's recently announced Fire Eagle also allows location-based input, which can then be used by other services.
Expanding possibilities
Geotagging your content is nothing new.
Flickr has allowed you to geotag your photos for a while now.
What is new is the possibilities for services wishing to ascertain location-based data for their own apps.
Categories: Geotagging 
, Services
Add Feedback (view all)
Leave feedback
is published and produced by Matt Thommes - an independent publishing enthusiast, mobile blogger, content creator, informative writer, web developer from Chicago.
Never one to conform, Matt intends to promote the effect the web has on our lives, in an effort to intensify, instruct, and clarify all that is happening around us.
Stats
3 unique visits since November 2008