I want to know gas prices via RSS. I want to be able to pick a region with Google maps and say “Show me the prices in this region”. Right after I see a list of stations with a comparison of fuel prices and available octanes’ — I want to be able hit SUBSCRIBE and stick those results into my feed reader. How? Well it’s not news that Google maps can be mixed in with custom applications (you can see all of the sexual predators near you – so why not the best place to gas up on the way home from work?)
I also want the information to be up to date, almost to the point where people are fighting tooth and nail to update that data. How? I think the incentive is the biggest issue here, there are plenty of user-driven gas sites out there right now, some even offer raffle prizes to the content providers. Not good enough — you need real incentive for this information, you need to share a % of your ad income with your user base. I detail this killer incentive model in my last post “Web2.0? Profit Sharing . Another key point is to make it easy for people to submit content via web and mobile devices (sms?). Imagine being able to make a few bucks by tapping a few commands into your phone every time you see a gas station?
I did a quick search of what was out there already, some people are going in the right direction but most are still lacking.
This site is a ‘close but no cigar’ implementation - http://www.thrnewmedia.com/maps/gas2.html it has the Google mapping integration but its hard to enter data plus the data is out of date (no incentive)
http://www.mapgasprices.com this site is ugly, clunky and I have yet to see any glyphs showing stations/prices. I don’t see any way to enter data either.
http://www.mywikimap.com doesn’t seem to have anything going on either.
I know there are capable people out there looking to build the next big thing — I think this model should make a good profit. So you got what you need — Now getter’ done! Oh and let me know when I can use it:)
Matthew
May 15th, 2006
Hello, wonder if you’d be interested in pursuing this idea any further? Go to http://www.alertdude.com, do a search of orlando, fl or miami, fl, and see if you like it.
We created the site last November and are currently in Florida, California, Alabama and New York. While you’re at alertdude, try out theater dude at this address: http://www.alertdude.com/theaters/
We’ve been searching for a great idea to use our interface for. For us, mapping and diplaying 50, 100+ results at a time is not a problem, the problem is the data. Even when we get the data, user input is vital, as is marketing. Email us what you think. Thanks
Aaron
May 15th, 2006
I dont when you check out mapgasprices.com but if you enter a zip code then the glyphs will pop up showing gas prices. The dates I saw were for the current day.
BPAndrew
May 15th, 2006
Matthew - Wow thats pretty impressive, I’m impressed at how smooth the site works. The google integration is great and for the alertdude I really like how the cards for the offenders works. You are or you have a great coder on staff:)
With the theaters I’m a bit confused at the RSS feed, is it just reviews on all movies out? Why not make your feed give the same information you do on your map? So like
http://www.alertdude.com/theaters/feed.php?latitude=100&longitude=50&zoomfactor=2
See what I mean? That would be worth subscribing too!
BPAndrew
May 15th, 2006
Aaron — I gave it a try again, maybe the addresses I tried the first time didn’t have data. This time I tried “1 Microsoft way, Redmond WA” and I got a bit of data this time!
Don’t get me wrong, this is a great start — but the data is a few days old (it’s essentially useless after a few hours) and there is no way to save your search and come back.
So Imagine you worked at Microsoft and you tried to use this.. not very helpful, I’d forget about it quickly.
So whats it missing? Like in my post — there’s no individual incentive to update data — and theres no RSS or easy way to check the data. Close but no cigar!
Matthew
May 18th, 2006
BPAndrew - thanks for the glowing review of alertdude. Theaterdude was more of a hobby than anything else, it’s not movie reviews, its theater reviews. People review theaters, if you click the links on the left, you’ll be taken to reviews people have written about theaters.
Anyways, like I said, we’re looking for the next great idea to use our ‘engine’ for. We could easily adapt alertdude or theaterdude for national gas stations and prices, the technical side is not a problem.
Problem is marketing, data, and user participation. Data can be bought or gotten. Once you have the marketing, the users will follow, but we don’t have the resources to do mass marketing. Look forward to hearing your thoughts. Thanks
P.S. I went to mapgasprices, did a search for zip 34110, got no glyphs, map showed Nebraska, plus a javascript error, ugh
BPAndrew
May 18th, 2006
You only need to worry about user participation. I think if you created an ad pool (all of your google income). You keep 25% or whatever, then divy out the rest to the people who post. Find a way to rank your users input and give higher % of the revenue to your best users.
Check out this post for the full blurb - http://www.bitporters.net/content/index.php/2006/04/20/web20-profit-sharing/
As for marketing? no problem — I get lots of traffic from “google maps gas prices” google searches daily. People want this service! If you make it as slick as your main service — you’ll be rolling in cash:)
mr e
February 28th, 2007
http://gasprices.mapquest.com/
danny b
April 22nd, 2007
gasprices.mapquest.com doesn’t provide an API to use.
MRisser
June 12th, 2007
I’m working on developing the same solution, using Yahoo! Maps, for our newspaper’s website redesign, the problem really isn’t with the coding, its with getting the gas prices. No one I’ve looked at so far has accurate, up-to-date gas prices in an RSS feed.
I’ve looked into gasbuddy.com and a few others and even gone so far as to contact gasbuddy.com. GasBuddy says they have no RSS feed, but they’re going to be releasing a Google Gadget in the near future. That’s great, but it does us no good.
GasBuddy’s feed is done through a javascript, which makes parsing it the way I would like to a pain in the backside. With everyone else its pretty much a case of screen scraping, which is OK, but if they for some reason decide to change their pages, well everything on my end would break.
So again, what we need is an RSS feed. Guess I’ll just have to keep searching.
jesse
September 2nd, 2008
Also looking for a good gas prices feed… let me know if anyone finds one.