I'm always eager to try new services on the web, especially those concerning web mapping. I first tried Google Squared several months ago and couldn't figure out what to make use of it for my mapping projects. Recently I learned that the Google Squared result can be exported to Google Spreadsheet. And Google Spreadsheet can create and serve that data set as RSS feed and several other formats. So that, I decided to give Google Squared another try. This time I used it to generate and export result to a Google Spreadsheet. That spreadsheet can be used to serve the data as RSS feed for any purpose. Here is the whole process of my experiment:- firstly, Google Squared was used to search for "Thai restaurants in New York" and the result exported to a Google Spreadsheet in my collection; secondly, I published the spreadsheet and allowed it to serve as RSS feed; and ultimately, a Yahoo Pipes was constructed to consume the feed, manipulate it through several Pipes' modules, and generate a maps mash-up of Thai restaurants in New York as the final result. On this map, you can zoom/pan to look around the target area which contains several markers signifying the Thai restaurants. If you click a marker you will see some description, picture and link concerning the restaurant at the marker's location.
Original "Thai Restaurants in New York" data: Google Squared
Intermediaries: Google Spreadsheet | ATOM | CSV | HTML | PDF | RSS | TXT
End products: Yahoo! Pipes | JSON | KML | RSS
