As US authorities struggled to evacuate stranded citizens from New Orleans and across Louisiana in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, concerned computer programmers were rapidly coding a series of web sites to help the rescue attempts.

The programmers took advantage of the latest internet technologies to create sites that draw on a range of sources to aid relief efforts, allowing visitors to find information intuitively.

Taking advantage of the open access that Google provides to its online mapping service, a number of sites were developed that automatically charted relevant data on a map of the area.

For example, one site – Katrina Shelter – automatically referenced data from another resource of available shelters and homes across the US on a map.

On the site, users can click on various locations and receive descriptions of how much space is available and how to contact them.

Another site focuses on relief efforts on the ground, providing a constantly updated map of stranded people waiting for help.

The sites highlight the sudden rise in popularity of online applications that make use of open and customisable mapping services, available from the likes of Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.

Another example comes from Paul Rademacher, a software engineer at Dreamworks Animation in the US. He built a site that sources housing information for the Silicon Valley area from Craigslist – an online classifieds site – and displays them by location as a layer in Google Maps.

The result, Housing Maps, was an instant online hit that provided a more intuitive and useful service than many local estate agencies could offer.

Best of all, the project took Rademacher less than three months to create, working only in his spare time.

This ability to quickly and easily integrate data from different sources and display them online in an intuitive manner is becoming increasingly interesting to business users.

Rod Smith, vice president of emerging internet technologies at IBM, says demand from companies for what he calls ‘situational applications’ is growing rapidly.

‘From a business standpoint, it can really change the user-level experience within the browser,’ he says.

While the most innovative sites are created by programmers such as Rademacher, companies are also getting on board.

Customer relationship management vendor Salesforce.com has created a tool that automatically maps a user’s business contacts on Google Maps, helping salespeople visually plan how to schedule their meetings in the most effective way when they are on the road.

But the ability to integrate data from a variety of online sources extends beyond just linking maps to useful chunks of data.

Smith says more firms are seeing middleware as very approachable and standardised, and are now using custom scripts to create a range of compelling solutions.

Open source applications such as Greasemonkey are helping by allowing users to add custom scripts to any web page to change its behaviour.

Smith cites an online service called Book Burro.

‘It’s one of my favourites,’ he says. ‘With this, I can go to Amazon and look up a book. It then pops up with a little note in the corner to show the price of that book at Barnes & Noble, halfprice.com, eBay and other sites I have linked to.

‘As organisations have refined and evolved their back-end systems, they’re looking at how this can apply to them internally. They want to see how they can use those components to do interesting things with their corporate applications.’

Another motivating factor is the ability to use such tools to rapidly create new services for customers.

‘In the past, it would take six months to put an application together and deliver it. But with these tools, we are finding that people can put these things together in a month or less,’ says Smith.

‘It makes the web a lot more personal to you and me.’

Map this

Innovative online mapping services are now available for just about any need:

* One UK service links a map with data from BBC Travel, as well as various weather and news sites, to create a live map of traffic jams, train delays and other issues that may affect travel. 

* Weather Bonk links data from several weather services to display appropriate weather icons on an online map of the UK. 

* gTraffic.info also provides a traffic congestion service, but allows users to select different types of travel to display on the map.

* Gmaptrack has a map of all Central London traffic cameras, and when users click on one it displays a live snapshot of the traffic.

* For drivers with a heavy foot, this site tracks all speed cameras in operation across the UK.

* Tourists can virtually tour London on sites such as CommunityWalk, clicking on
landmarks to get details and photos.

* A blog site that charts new services that make use of Google Maps can be found here.