Pumps About Town with Google Maps

Shoes About Town is an inspired promotional campaign from New York shoe salon Bergdorf Goodman.

The promotional campaign encourages people to take an Instagram photo and then to post it on Twitter with the hashtag #BGSHOES. The photos of the shoes then appear on a great looking custom map, created using the Google Maps API.


I suspect that the inspiration for the design of the hand-drawn type zoom controls on the Bergdorf Goodman map and the idea for the map may owe something to Mike Gleason's tutorial Create Zoomabable Images with the Google Maps API.

Mike's tutorial explains how you can create a Google Map replacing the normal Google Maps map tiles with your own image.


The promotional campaign may also have been partly inspired by Zappos, the online shoes retailer. In 2009 Zappos created a real-time map of orders placed on the Zappos website called Zappos Map.

Zappos add photographs of their product being brought in real-time on a Google Map of the United States. If you click on any of the photographs on the map then you are taken to the web page for that product (and Zappos presumably hope you will be tempted to buy the product yourself). This is a little trick that the Bergdorf Goodman map is missing at the moment.

If I was Bergdorf Goodman I would add links from the photos of their shoes on the map to the product's page on their online store,

Finding Local Store Sales with Google Maps

In these tough economic times, now more than ever, most of us are looking for a bargain when buying products. SaleLocator.com can help you find those bargains by showing you stores with sales nearby.

SaleLocator.com allows bargain hunters to search for nearby stores that are currently holding sales. Users can search by location, by keyword and by category (including Clothing & Apparel, Furniture, Health & Beauty, Sports & Fitness, Toys and more).

The results of a search on SaleLocator.com are displayed on a Google Map and shown in list form. The map shows the location of stores currently having sales and even tells you how far away they are from your searched location.

Shopping in Sydney with Google Maps

Urban Walkabout is a comprehensive on-line shopping guide to the popular shopping areas in Perth and Sydney, Australia.



The site includes Google Maps for both Perth and Sydney, displaying all the best shops in all the popular suburbs of both cities. The shops on each map are categorised into Fashion & Bodycare, Objects & Art, Food & Drink, Stay & Explore and Shopping Centres.



If you click on a shop's marker on the map you can then click through to read Urban Walkabout's full review of the establishment.



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How to Create a Real-Time Google Map

Best Buy - Live Mobile Scan Map

Best Buy place QR codes on all their products. When a customer uses the Best Buy app, or any other QR code scanner, they are shown the product details for the product they have scanned. The Best Buy - Live Mobile Scan Map uses Google Maps to show the latest real-time scans of products in stores across the US.

The map uses the recently launched App Engine Channel API to update the map in real-time. The Google App Engine Blog has a good guest post by the developer explaining how the app was created. You can also play with a working demo on the channel-map-demo project on GitHub.

The map itself animates between the latest scans in Best Buy stores and makes good use of the Google Maps API styled maps functions to create a distinctive look for the app.
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Google Maps Store Locator Plugin

Google Maps Store Locator Plugin for Wordpress
Viadat have produced a Google Maps Store Locator plugin for Wordpress. The plugin enables you to create sites in Wordpress to show the locations of stores and points of interest.

The plugin allows users to import locations from CSV files and can export locations to CSV and XML for safe storage. The plugin also supports a number of themes so that you can customise the design to suit your website.

Here are some sites already using the Viadat Store Locator plugin:

4Palms Importing

This site uses the store locator plugin to show stores that stock Caybrew beer. It is possible to search the map by address.

Wine Wipes
Wine Wipes are a quick and easy way to discreetly remove red wine stains from your teeth and mouth. Wine Wipes use the store locator to show the location of stores selling the product in Canada.

Florida Assisted Living
A Florida Assisted Living Facility provides accommodation with 24 hour supervision for older adults who can no longer live independently. Florida Assisted Living use the Viadat store locator to show the locations of assisted living facilities in Florida.

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