I don't know if you've seen THIS yet:

Map Hacks on Crack

SAN FRANCISCO -- The internet's two largest search engines are begging to get hacked.

On Wednesday, Google opened a set of programming interfaces for its popular Google Maps service, in the hope hackers will overlay the maps with data from outside sources -- such as wireless cafes.

Just one day later, Yahoo announced its own set of programming tools for its map service, Yahoo Maps.

Both companies are hoping the new mapping APIs, or application programming interfaces, will excite developers, help the companies find new employees and, perhaps most importantly, result in free product prototyping.

But the search giants were also reacting in no small part to web hackers who had already started to reverse-engineer the two mapping services in ways neither had expected.

Before Google opened the Maps API, several "mashups" had been created, including Paul Rademacher's housing map, which layers craigslist housing ads onto Google maps, and an anti-gridlock site that marries Yahoo traffic data with Google maps. There's also Adrian Holovaty's ingenious Chicago crime map, which lets users create custom views of crimes from auto theft to bribery on maps as tiny as individual police beats.

Other hacks include a small-town walking tour with annotations, a map with clickable London traffic cameras and a map for finding cheap gasoline that's no longer online.

Rademacher's Google-craigslist hack earned him a star role at Where 2.0. Tim O'Reilly, the web-trend predictor at the helm of the O'Reilly publishing company, sees the future of the internet in these innovative, unpaid hacks.

"Google Maps with craigslist is the first Web 2.0 application," O'Reilly said, referring to his belief that the future of the internet will be created from interlocking connections of open data services that will be constantly improved and tweaked.

The story includes links to the apps.

"Whenever a Voice of Moderation addresses liberals, its sole purpose is to stomp out any real sign of life." - James Wolcott