About the Project Proposal  >> Comparative Analysis Audience Assessment Schedule  Budget Executive Summary Members Mohammed Shamma Rick Murtha Qunyan Mao Jennifer Lee	Universal Locator Home Comparative Analysis    Yahoo Maps   The Yahoo Maps site allows a user to enter an address to be plotted on a map so that it can be geographically located. Users are also allowed to enter starting and ending addresses for door-to-door driving directions within a major metro area or city-to-city directions for long distance trips. In addition to that, users can choose to perform a "Find the nearest business" to an address that is currently displayed on the map. The Universal Locator site would attempt to enhance the "Find a nearest business" feature in Yahoo maps so that users could find several businesses and/or complements and supplements to those businesses simultaneously. For example: A user might specify that they would like to find the nearest grocery store to their work. The Universal Locator site would also find bakeries, butchers, floral shops, video store etc. (depending on what the users chooses to search on) Another feature of the Universal Locator site would allow users to perform address browsing, much similar to browsing by call number a library’s online catalog. If a user is interested in knowing what other types of businesses are adjacent or near by a certain address, they can simply instruct the system to browse forward (increasing) or backward (decreasing). Visa -- ATM Locator   This site allows users to search for ATM’s all over the world. Users select their regions and countries from pre-specified international regions. The then site prompts them to select an address so that it can perform a search of its ATM database.   Sidewalk   Sidewalk.com allows users to find movies, restaurants, theaters, and other related businesses and events so that users can plan their evenings out more efficiently. However this site as well as the Visa site are very theme specific. The Universal Locator would be "universal" in that it would be attempting to locate anything that has a physical address. In addition to that certain businesses might have virtual addresses (URL’s) which could also be integrated into the Universal Locator site.     The following are several sites that use technology similar to what will be implemented in the Universal Locator site.   MapXtreme v2.0 Digital Library Project GIS Viewer Clickable Floorplan Earth Sciences Library 230 McCone Hall GeoInfoMapper Mapper 2.1       Research   1.     Access Code, Thom Lieb http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/03-04/lieb0304.html 2.    Adding Value by Adding Links, Karen Hunter http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/03-03/hunter.html 3.    Getting from Concept to Reality, Chris Kartchner http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/03-04/kartchner.html 4.    Developing the Appropriateness Matrix, Michael Jensen http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/04-01/jensen.html 5.    Inactivity on Interactivity, Thom Lieb http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/03-03/lieb0303.html
	Last Updated: October 25, 1998