I asked a colleague from work today if he had any news about new Internet phenomena that would be cool to check out. He told me about the concept of social software. Social software is where someone takes an existing computer program and combines it with another idea to make it more personalized for people. A perfect example of this comes in the form of a new craze taking over the world: Google Map mash-ups.

http://maps.google.com/ is already a cool site that has taken a personalized approach to many different ways of helping people. For example, I typed in ?Pizza restaurants? into the finder with the name of the town my father lives in near Atlanta, Georgia, USA and it showed me exactly where all the pizzas were, the names of the restaurants, and contacct details (if I wished to place an order over the phone). Pretty cool. This is only the tip of the iceberg. Other people around the world have taken the Google Map software and combined it with their personal interests to create a whole array of exciting maps filled with photos and information. The ultimate site to check some out is http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/.

Let me give you an idea of what people are doing out there on the Internet to make the world a more informed place. I?m planning on going to live in Japan pretty soon. Well at http://www.bento.com/tokyofood.html I could find a map of the Kansai region (where I will probably live) which showed me exactly where all the vegetarian restaurants are, the type of cultural food each was (E.g.: Sri Lankan), a photo of the establishment, as well as all the relevant information-including reviews. You can tell I?m a connoisseur, or at least I attempt to be one. Let?s go elsewhere.

The http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com/ site has map categories like current events, transportation, weather, wireless and mobile, housing and real estate, business, stats and demographics, employment, recreation and fitness, events and sport, travel and tourism, and even maps of crime and sex offenders-that?s a little weird for me, but some people obviously are keen to keep their familie