CIR 7.01 - A small Hamilton, Ontario-based startup called MapTheWorld.net is on a mission to help newspapers defend themselves from the Googles and Craigslists of the world. The weapon of choice: a tool that allows newspapers to generate their own interactive maps with value-added local and nonprofit information unavailable anywhere else.

With a team of mostly volunteer student cartographers across North America, MapTheWorld.net has already compiled a feel-good smattering of defiantly eclectic data, including the locations of all American Humane Associations in the U.S., various battlefields, cemeteries and war monuments; plus a mash-up of politically correct facilities ranging from food banks to the Red Cross.

Add to that geo-coded submissions from local advertisers, and MapTheWorld.net has put together a package that just might give newspapers an edge in creating truly local services directories which go beyond the yellow pages approach of a Google or Yahoo Maps.

“People don’t live in restaurants and hotels,” Gary Hendin, the company’s president and founder, told CI. “They spend their time in churches, museums and schools, on bike paths and in recreation areas. This is stuff that’s difficult to find displayed on a map,” Hendin added, since it doesn’t have the same kind of commercial appeal as the nearest wifi-ready Starbucks.

MapTheWorld.net isn’t big yet – only two years old, Hendin says the company is at least another year away from profitability – and it counts as customers only 12 small papers in the Midwest, the largest being The Daily Reporter in Coldwater, Mich.

Still, we were impressed enough by its model to think that with the right partners, it could catch on. A Google-killer? Not likely. But possibly a nice Google acquisition at some point down the road.

David Ferro, publisher of The Daily Reporter, was similarly positive. “We see it as a method of generating additional traffic to our site and a community offering, whether somebody is looking for a service agency or a place to go shopping,” he said. “It’s the slickest mapping facility I’ve seen. It’s certainly different from Mapquest.com and those others because this one provides very local information. Plus, it’s all tied to the newspaper’s Web site.”

To get a feel for how MapTheWorld.net works, surf over to The Daily Record’s site (http://www.thedailyreporter.com/community_maps/). Here you’ll see an expandable list of “Community Resources” on the right side that shows everything from “Art Galleries” and “Museums” to “Thrift Shops” and “Food Pantries.”

The overall list is generic and appears on all cities that MapTheWorld.net serves; if there’s a local listing available, an icon shows with an on/off button to display the listing on the map. Like Google and Yahoo, rolling over a map point displays a quick summary and clicking the point opens a new window with more details and links.

Despite its nonprofit leanings, MapTheWorld.net also has its eyes set on the growing real estate space mapping space. A prominent link at the bottom of every map screen cajoles landlords and home-owners to add their properties to the map. (When we checked, there were no takers on The Daily Record’s site.) MapTheWorld.net suggests a fee of $10 per “map point” per month for property and other commercial listings (The Daily Reporter charges $75 for six months) with nonprofit links for free.

MapTheWorld.net has another component that Google and Yahoo don’t offer, and that the company is hoping to leverage in the real estate space: a time-based function. A Realtor or home-owner could schedule a property showing for a particular date and time. When the period has passed, the map dot disappears. Hendin said this function would also be useful for garage sales, auctions and other community events.

“You don’t have to be terribly map-sophisticated to know that a yard sale that is over is of no value,” Hendin quipped.

Newspapers using the MapTheWorld.net system collect payment from advertisers then split the revenue 80/20 with MapTheWorld.net. There is a $1,000 setup and integration fee for each newspaper with a volume discount for papers that are part of a chain.

The company is small enough right now that Hendin is still personally approving all new submissions. And he’s adamant about refusing anything that’s not family friendly. “We won’t put strip clubs or escort services on one of our maps,” he said.

In addition to the public interface, MapTheWorld.net can be used by a newspaper’s editorial department to quickly generate maps. “If a newspaper wants a map to show the location of a fire, we give them the ability to just plug in an address and a dot appears,” Hendin said. “They can also create demographic maps based on crime statistics, air and water quality, census data.”

It’s a neat idea, but one that hardly seems defendable in the long term. Hendin begs to differ.

“It’s harder than it sounds,” he said, explaining that most commercial maps have too much data on them for effective editorial use. Small town newspapers don’t have the budget for a dedicated cartographer to do this. MapTheWorld.net’s approach, Hendin said, “is fast and cheap enough for small town newspapers which need the help the most.”

Hendin pointed to a new carpool tool the company is releasing later this year. “We’re laying over the maps of every transit route in the U.S. A newspaper can easily show accidents and pile ups.”

MapTheWorld.net’s software is still buggy – it only works on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, leaving Firefox, Safari and Opera users stuck in the slow lane. Map scrolling requires a screen refresh – very AJAX-unfriendly. And the company’s corporate Web site is still decidedly “alpha,” pointing visitors to MapTheWorld.net’s previous incarnation as RentTheWorld.com.

While he says there are 12 people working in MapTheWorld.net, Hendin admits that it’s his special events company (producing new product launches and trade show receptions) that’s funded MapTheWorld.net’s efforts to date.

Still, the company has no shortage of ambition. Hendin says MapTheWorld.net is working with local schools and the National Register of Historic Properties to get kids involved in the map making process. There are new layers for polling stations on election days across the U.S. And a feature set currently in development will display every Native American reservation with a synopsis of life on each reserve.

Will it be enough to make a difference for local newspapers fighting off the Google juggernaut? Hendin thinks so. We’re encouraged, but MapTheWorld.net is still in highly uncharted territory.