The English Cemetery

Right now, the top searched item in Technorati, a Basque term: ETA. The ceasefire came. It was very much needed.

This morning I just thought about the joke that we chose to define Tagzania's blog: Conspiring for world domination from the Basque Country. Tagging the planet to set up our targets.

Basque politics are so boring, complicated, ugly... World domination is like a scapegoat. A wider playfround, with fresh air.

First came Google Moon, Then, this week, Mars and Europa, not to be confused with Europe ;-)

But I think that the big one is not yet with us, Google Celestial Sphere

The skies by night, northern and southern hemisphere, stars and costellations... It can be managed with lat/lon and image tiles, just as Google Maps.

And when the API is created for that... We'll have Tagzania Space! I think that it may make sense, to have personal/social bookmarks and tags over the skies. So much amateur astronomy and instituions out there, all very much conected to the web. A new extra-solar planet here, a supernova there, predicted position of comet X for tomorrow night, Star Trek interest points... Much more to tag in the universe than in Mars alone.

Ilustration below, the one and only (as far as I know) Basque placename in Mars, Galdakao:

Formula One season for 2006 begins on sunday, March 12. All circuits, with race dates, at this Tagzania F1 2006 map. We have doubts about the location of the Istanbul Park speedway, anyway. It's new, and apparently not showing in satellite imagery, but... The Grand Prix of Turkey is on August, so we may well figured it out by that time.

There's now search in Tagzania. Partnering with Geonames, what a great service.

The data at Geonames can be incredibly precise. You can search for features with great detail. Search for General Sherman, and you get the position of the General Sherman Tree, a giant sequoia in California, the biggest living being on Earth.

Satellite imagery at that point doesn't let us indicate if that individual tree is really there, but we assume they're right. http://www.tagzania.com/near/36.58083/-118.75/

However, there's an option to correct data on Geonames itself, through a direct link, and if you do so, subsequent searches show corrected results.

Also, search and Near URLs can be constructed now by third parties, if anyone is interested in linking their apps or sites with Tagzania. The search URL is like the one at Technorati:

• www.tagzania.com/search/balaklava

And the Near URL can be constructed with the following logic: www.tagzania.com/near/lat/lon/ with latitude and longitude given in decimal numbers. For instance:

• www.tagzania.com/near/51.45/-0.05/ shows locations around London.

Maps.ask.com , a new contendant in the Ajaxian maps competition. It comes after Google Maps and Virtual Earth, and they have no API for the moment, but the roadmaps and streetplans for much of Europe are clearly superior.

Now this place I am now, Eibar, has drag-and-zoom maps:

Several eastern European countries covered as well:

In Russia, St. Petersburg and Moscow have streetplans!

The satellite views are not as detailed as in Google, but, they reach the level of resolution that Google has in many areas of lower resolution. As a matter of fact, they share imagery. Compare this and this , same clouds over the Basque coast.