Tracking The Sopranos on Google Maps.

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Author: Johnson, Cassie

Can't remember where Tony Soprano was when he pointed a .38 at his nephew Christopher or what street he was on when he caused Phil to drive his car into a parked delivery truck? Fans of HBO's The Sopranos can now turn to Crime.Organized. (http://www.hbo.com/sopranos/map) for the answers to these questions and more.

To help prep fans of The Sopranos for the March 12 launch of the series' sixth season, HBO, a Time Warner unit, launched Crime.Organized., an interactive map of New Jersey that was created using Google Maps. According to Courtney Monroe, senior vice president of advertising at HBO, the map is "a geo-spatial tour of the TV series, a very interactive way to get people caught up."

"Very interactive" is right. Visitors to the Crime.Organized, Web site can click on any of the map's red icons to learn what events from the show occurred at those particular areas (featured spots include Shea Stadium; Grand Ave., Queens; and the Crazy Horse). They can also view short video clips and read brief synopses of the highlighted episodes.

This isn't the first time that people have added information to maps provided by Google Maps. "Mashups," or maps on which people have placed clickable icons, have been popping up all over the Internet since Google launched its mapping service last April. One popular mashup (http://map.pequenopolis.com) shows you where you would end up if you were to dig a hole through various locations on Earth. (FYI: If I were to start digging near Philadelphia, I would end up off the coast of Australia in the Indian Ocean.) Other mashups have been created to pinpoint pizza parlors in New York City and to show real-time locations of commuter trains. (To check out the latest mashups grouped by category, visit the Google Maps Mania Weblog at http://googlemapsmania.blogspot.com.)

While mashups might not be anything new in the online world, according to AdAge.com, "[HBO] is likely to be the first advertiser to have paid the search giant [Google] to use its map technology for promotional purposes. … Working through interactive agency Deep Focus, HBO is buying search terms such as 'Sopranos Map' to push viewers to the site."

Google offers Google Map's API free of charge to anyone who wants to combine it with a set of location-based data and add it to any Web site that is free to consumers. To get the API and create your own mashup, visit http://www.google.com/apis/maps.

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By Cassie Johnson

Cassie Johnson is copy editor for Information Today and assistant editor for Computers in Libraries and Marketing Library Services. Send your comments about this article to itletters@infotoday.com.