Google China Released Holiday Mass Migration Map
This week several provinces of China in central and southern China suffered blizzard and ice storm, which seriously damaged the railway and highway transportation. However, the Chinese New Year (the Spring Festival) is coming, tens of millions of Chinese will returned home for annual family reunion, which is the world largest annual mass migration, i.e. ChunYun in Chinese. Passengers have to wait at the railway station for the resumption of railway service.
People also tried to search news in Internet, but they may be disappointed, because it is really not easy to find useful information about a specific city. Yesterday, Google China launched a mashup map service to try to solve their problems.
The map aggregates information about weather, latest news on close or resumption of railway and highway transportation. When you click on the icon on the map, it will show related information. It helps people to locate the most important news about a city in a user-friendly way, very useful to them. In the left pane, it also shows important news title about weather and transportation.
It is a mashup service, but it is the best product launched by Google China which can reflect the innovation spirit of Google, it is a product that really understand and try to address the need of Chinese people. Yes, the product is still 1.0 style, even though it invites people to send email to inform Google team latest development around them. It can be better, if it has some web 2.0 elements for more timely interaction among users.
Anyway, I like this product and the innovative idea behind it. I also regretted to see that Baidu was absent this time in taking advantage of the power of new media and new tool to help people.
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[...] If you are unlucky enough to have got caught up in the chaos you may want to check out this innovative mashup map service Google has created to show the current weather and transport across the country. [via] [...]
[...] Mehr dazu auf China Web 2.0 Review [...]
The current storm and tragedy suffered by the people in South China remind me the movie . No water and eletricity for 7 days and nights in Chenzhou City Hunan Province…
[...] Source: the excellent China Web2.0 Review blog [...]
[...] China Web 2.0 Review: Google China Released Holiday Mass Migration Map - “The map aggregates information about weather, latest news on close or resumption of railway and highway transportation” [...]
While the initiative is a great idea and the Google China team should be applauded for it, I’m curious to see how much use it will actually get.
A huge proportion of the Chinese New Year travelers are migrant workers who rarely use PCs let alone know the Google name. If Google could somehow find a way to create an updated weather and transportation offering for the mobile phone, the impact may match the loftiness of their intentions.
[...] Google China Released Holiday Mass Migration Map (tags: google China internet map maps mashup weather service) Possibly related posts (automatically generated): [...]
合肥地图也推出了“2008合肥春运地图”
http://www.0551ditu.com/2008chunyun.php
虽然我们没有谷歌那样的影响力,但我们依然用心在帮助别人。
衷心祝福每一位在外工作的朋友都能平安回家过年!
[...] As posted on the “China Web2.0 Review” (a blog in English) Google China posted a “Chinese New Year Holiday Mass Migration” mashup map. The map shows weather and status of roads and rails for major cities, with associated info links. Very useful. If you click today, things look much better. Here’s a thumbnail of how it looked during the chaos of last week: [...]
[...] information, like train tickets. It also included traffic information on live map, similar to what Google China did last year. In general, it’s a pure marketing effort. No kicking ass [...]