
Google Maps Instant (inspired by Youtube Instant) - vijaydev
http://hartlabs.net/instant_maps/
======
DavidMcLaughlin
The funny thing about the "instant" search is around the time of AJAX
exploding four or five years ago, this type of "real-time" search was all the
rage. Over time it disappeared, most likely because it both wastes resources
and a lot of users found it annoying. From that, auto-complete suggestions was
the next evolution. Now we seem to have gone full circle. As impressive as it
is that they're handling way more searches than before with lightning speed,
the whole thing seems really naff. The marketing video for Google Instant in
particular is hilarious - "I don't even have to press Enter!"

I work for Nokia and we used to have "real-time search" on Ovi Maps and this
was removed around a year ago, again due to a confusing and poor user
experience. After all this buzz I saw some people on the internal
communication tools ask if we have the technology internally to do instance
geosearch.

Marketing is everything.

~~~
cmurphycode
This is a classic engineer response. It's not about who does it first, it's
about who does it right. We didn't have the technology to implement this
properly 5 years ago. I've never seen the Ovi Maps tool you mention, but I'm
willing to bet that it wasn't polished enough to make it natural for users.

Now, I'm not entirely convinced that Google Instant is polished enough either-
anecdotally, I've already seen some confusion. But saying "it's all marketing"
willfully ignores the lesson we've all been taught by Apple: a revolutionary
feature that isn't intuitively usable is no revolutionary feature at all.

~~~
DavidMcLaughlin
Actually, to me it seems like the real lesson most companies are picking up
from Apple is to grossly overstate every little thing they do in the name of
hype and buzz.

I mean, revolutionary feature? Seriously? My whole point is this revolution
happened five years ago and people learnt their lesson and moved on. I'm sure
a lot of developers will be asked to put this back in, but on the plus side if
you're not dealing with Google scale it's a trivial thing to implement.

~~~
jessriedel
I think you guys are talking past each other. Your claim is that, if Google
Instant is successful, it will be because of marketing/hype/some-other-non-
technical-reason. His claim is that it will be because Google made the feature
(which everyone agrees existed in a basic form 5 years ago) accessible to the
average user.

I don't think you guys are going to be able to settle this debate without some
data about real life users.

------
Elite
The concept doesn't translate for maps.

An address as entered from left-to-right goes from the very specific to the
general. Therefore all the api calls and screen updating you make are
completely irrelevant until I type in my city half -way through.

~~~
there
google maps on my android phone does this type of instant-search
recommendation and i always thought it was stupid, too. i just typed in "1218"
on it and it's trying to recommend me "1218 grand-saconnex, switzerland" (i
live in the united states).

if it's going to do search recommendations, it should at least do a regional
geo-ip/gps lookup and offer suggestions i'd probably be driving to.

~~~
michaelhart
That is possible, but when I was making this, I didn't want to use server-side
technologies (php) because I wanted it to stay fast, which would have been
necessary to determine your approximate location and get the GeoID prior to
page generation.

It is easily possible, however, it just would have been soooo slow in
comparison.

~~~
jordanmessina
Then don't use php... It's possible to grab user location via javascript, the
client just needs a compatible browser. I'd say judging by the people who
would stumble upon your project more than half would have a browser capable of
grabbing location via javascript.

------
edw519
I typed in my home address in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and it put me in Long
Beach, California.

I think you're on to something.

------
tlrobinson
Someone looking for a job on the Google Maps team?

~~~
sachinag
He says so right under the input box. :)

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IgorPartola
"Geocode was not successful for the following reason: OVER_QUERY_LIMIT"

I was half way through typing my city's name...

~~~
Das_Bruce
Adding a quarter second gap between new searches would probably avoid this.

~~~
pavel_lishin
And not making it a modal popup would prevent it locking down my browser.

~~~
michaelhart
I sorda forgot that in there when I made it, then it got copied over to the
CDN. So changing it was a little difficult. But I did ultimately change it; it
now redirects you to a different version of the page with a fresh API key and
a different IP address.

While it hasn't fixed the API limit issues completely, it has helped
significantly.

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xentronium
Hi guys. Ever heard of Google Instant, Youtube Instant and Google Maps
Instant?

Well, I made Google Picasa Instant. By the way, I'm looking for a job too!

... Okay, Actually I didn't but it could be possible.

~~~
michaelhart
I did make an Instant Google Image Search.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1681775>

------
feross
Hi, I'm the creator of YouTube Instant. This is pretty awesome. Congrats!

------
scorpion032
Google Maps team, at least much of it, is in Bangalore.

Like to relocate to India?

~~~
yellowbkpk
The Geo team has a whole building in Mountain View, I'm sure they'd let him
work there :).

------
adrianwaj
\- [http://google-maps-utility-
library-v3.googlecode.com/svn/tag...](http://google-maps-utility-
library-v3.googlecode.com/svn/tags/keydragzoom/2.0.1/examples/) check out
these samples to allow users to zoom into a point when they've found it, eg:
[http://google-maps-utility-
library-v3.googlecode.com/svn/tag...](http://google-maps-utility-
library-v3.googlecode.com/svn/tags/keydragzoom/2.0.1/examples/dragzoom.html)

\- Great to see business listings too:
[http://www.google.com/uds/solutions/mapsearch/reference.html...](http://www.google.com/uds/solutions/mapsearch/reference.html#_resultlistings)
[http://www.google.com/uds/solutions/mapsearch/boot-
complete....](http://www.google.com/uds/solutions/mapsearch/boot-
complete.html)
[http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/v2...](http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/v2/examples/control-
googlebar.html)

Good work so far.

------
ericb
I think waiting for a space to be typed so you know the newest typed chunk is
a usable discrete piece of data along with a small delay for when no space is
typed would make this work better.

In thinking about how this compares to youtube instant, I'm not sure an
autocomplete would work well at the global level without more thought and
refinement.

------
natabbotts
This is really impressive. I wonder if the guy will get a job offer - he
certainly seems to be a pretty quick coder.

------
porter
You should give it a short time lag. Instead of it immediately trying to find
out my location, make it find my location after I stop typing for 2 seconds.

------
shortformblog
This is clever. Who cares if it's copycat? I bet you if it was slickened up
slightly it'd be a perfect fit on Google's stable. I think transition
animations and auto-zoom would help.

And how about this for an idea: Why not split up the boxes in two, one for
city and one for address? It seems this might work better with a box for
general tuning and one for fine-tuning. Just a thought.

------
paolomaffei
Well, cool but... first place? I wonder how many other "clones" we'll see in
the next days

edit: don't want to be mean

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beaumartinez
Well, it got my house, which is in Spain, albeit after a long list of JS
alerts. Nice job! Even if you can't get around the errors, at least don't
inform the user via JS alerts, they steal the focus from the search box and
hence are _indescribably_ annoying.

------
dredge
Are the map pins ever cleared? As I continue typing a long place name, I can
see the 'shadow' behind the pin getting darker and darker with each keystroke.

It's 'neat' but I don't think it's useful, per se. Possibly no more or less
useful than YouTube Instant though.

------
olegkikin
It's broken

Example: 110 W 75th st, new york, ny

Compare to the correct location on google maps:
[http://maps.google.com/maps?q=110+W+75th+st,+new+york,+ny...](http://maps.google.com/maps?q=110+W+75th+st,+new+york,+ny&z=15)

------
pavel_lishin
<http://i.imgur.com/YFCKK.png>

Modal popup came up about three times. There's gotta be a better way of
handling that - I wasn't even typing very fast.

~~~
michaelhart
It wasn't your fault. Unfortunately, it's a combination of no buffer between
queries and a lot of people using it at the same time.

I did remove the alert window, but it will take time to propagate to my CDN.

------
greenlblue
You get a job too I guess but you should get rid of the query limit.

~~~
cstuder
Plus get an auto-zoom feature.

~~~
buro9
And clear markers from the prior keystroke.

------
jscore
I type "New", it shows me 3 cities on the map (New York one of them). I then
continue " York" and it doesn't do anything.

I think Google's phone call might delayed a bit.

------
michaelhart
Update to v0.2 just went live

Major features: \- Intelligent zoom \- More efficient API usage \- Markers
clear with new searches

------
rakkhi
I really like this - can you make an iPhone application that does google maps
instant search?

~~~
michaelhart
It works on iPhone and Android. :)

~~~
rakkhi
It does too! I have added it to my home screen but the accuracy does not seem
to be that great - e.g. searching for a Roka restaurant in Canary wharf london
doesn't work, postcode search in UK also doesn't seem to work

------
raquo
Is the "scroll up to zoom out" behaviour intended? Usually it's the other way.

~~~
michaelhart
I didn't modify the default events. It could perhaps be a bug with the Google
Maps v3 API. I will look into it, and report a bug if necessary :) Thanks!

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Ras_
Whoa! It only needed four letters to pinpoint my home street in Finland.

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joshwa
"Geocode was not successful for the following reason: ZERO_RESULTS"

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keyle
Haha, I like your try! And it works really smooth.

------
k3dz
instant is cool no doubt.. but the proactivity becomes irritating after a
while

------
mkramlich
I like how typing "Paris" went to Paris, France and then adding ", Texas"
takes you to the location expected as well. I like to see tricky cases like
that handled the least surprising way.

------
c00p3r
any Facebook/Twiter Instant?

btw, there are lots of good ideas about command line - reverse search as in
readline, context help as in Cisco IOS or SoftIce debugger and Zsh of course.

