At first glance, I thought NavDog was just another Google map and event mashup. But it’s not – While NavDog is based on Microsoft Virtual Earth, it also has a layer of user interface on top of the map that shows real promise. You can easily recenter the map on surrounding communities, and floating windows provide context like the number of nearby events and their details. I liked this easy way of inspecting the events, but I was wishing they were ordered and displayed by date (at least optionally) so that I could get a sense of when all of this stuff was going on without clicking on each event one at a time.
I found some interesting events by inspecting my neighborhood. But because the events on NavDog are user generated, I sometimes came across stuff like “40 acres for sale” – someone had figured out how to get free advertising by putting in this “event” that zoomed to the location of the property they wanted to sell. NavDog’s blog seems to support and even perhaps encourage this sort of thing when it says “… you can find or list just about anything. We use the term event but that really covers more than just traditional events. You can list a business, a store or a year round market as well as anything you would consider an event.” NavDog may want to at least think about categorizing these types of content and providing simple filters – otherwise, I can see the system becoming a messy jumble of map-based “stuff” that’s, well, all over the map.
I asked NavDog founder Shawn Fredrickson about the decision to go with user content instead of event feeds. Shawn told me that while they’re currently seeding some events into the system, the “goal is to be 100% user generated content with a few exceptions.” From where I sit, I think the service would be more useful if it offered both user generated content and feeds from sources such as TicketMaster or Upcoming, perhaps with filters.
The site appears to be gaining a little momentum and has attracted about 1,500 registrations so far. Folks in the GIS and Virtual earth community seem to be buzzing a bit. The service was “officially” launched just a few weeks ago on March 30th and Shawn told me that the “traffic is beginning to skyrocket as people all over America begin to discover this great site and the fun bit of Americana it delivers.”
Thoroughly amused, I asked Shawn what got NavDog started.
“I began to look around the Internet for flawed systems and sure enough, I began to see silos everywhere – not only silos but gaps in information, inefficiencies in the user experience. Newspaper classifieds were a joke with 3 meager lines of text for some $45.00 that forced you to call the host of the sale and whip out a pen and write down directions, ask them what they were selling and so on. The event classified websites were merely an online extension of the same flawed model. Naturally I took a step back and looked at the entire space from the thousand mile view and instantly I saw a common thread that connected all of these systems, a thread that connected all of us, it was geography. So I began to model a system that would use the common thread of geography to tie vertical markets, silos and information gaps together and what emerged was and is NavDog, a living marketplace on a map.” – NavDog founder, Shawn Fredrickson.
NavDog’s blog also gives some hints about where the company is headed with this: “In the coming months and year our service will incorporate an integrated messaging system, Real-time route planning, and with a GPS enabled smart phone our system will allow you to quickly add an event to the map while you are at the event.” and goes on to tease us with “If this isnt enough there are numerous advances I cant tell you anything about because of the hyper competitive nature of the business.”
NavDog is based in Littleton and is currently seeking venture capital to expand marketing efforts and complete development.
Thanks for the interest and write up.
Some of the items you mentioned are in the works, you can find event filters on the right side control panel, and re-ordering events by date is something we intend to add within a week or so. We are also implementing saved preferences for members so they can eliminate things that do not interest them. We are encouraging a diversity of content in order to break the silo mentality that creates specific sites for specific topics, heaven forbid that you should want to go to a fair and garage sale all in one day, and with the same set of driving directions, right? In the current state of things that would require a trip to 2 different websites, and each of those will want to farm you out to Map quest or Google where you will have to type in your address 2 separate times and print 2 separate sets of directions, uuuuugh I get tired just writing about it.
I am a big fan of the human element; I wanted to see a mapping system where people had some measure of control. A good example of this is when a person types in their address at one of the big three mapping sites and it puts them miles away from where they actually live, they cant just call the company and say hey this isnt right and even if they could the big three sites pull unified data from one source that they do not control over. In our system you can fix that inaccuracy if it exists and move on with your life, if your public venue is wrong you can correct that as well and the next person who uses that venue will not have to repeat the process because its already fixed.
Definitely, we are still a work in progress and sure there are a few bugs here and there but we are nimble and can address things pretty fast so the site is improving weekly and will continue to improve at a rapid pace for years to come.