Makesolutions.net

Cool alert: If you feed your blog to Outside.in's new GeoToolkit, it will monitor it for location-specific content, and give you a map you can embed in your site. It also gives you analytics, so you can tell later what locations you've been covering.

Previous coverage:
Outside.in Radar: Super-mega-hyper-local content.

The map widget gets more interesting when it brings in the geo-tagged data from other sources as well. If you're writing about a happening at a particular location, you could, theoretically, ask your map widget to show related content from other sites or from advertisers.

I tried the automatic location-deriving function on Webware, and it picked up popular company names for which it knows the address. It also picks up popular venue names (airports, stadiums), neighborhood, ZIP codes, and so on. You can help it along by geocoding your blog posts explictly, for example, by inserting a Google Map link in a story (other methods).

The geocoding function isn't relevant to all sites, especially those, like Webware, that are about apps that exist primarily in the no-place of the Web. But if you write about the real world, it's a clever tool that helps readers see what your content is really about.

See also: Everyblock; Yourstreet.

Location flag for the post (Outside.in's address): [where: 20 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NY]