Google Treasure Hunt - Map Layer

Even for an April Fool's joke, this is a pretty neat map layer feature. Google Maps already allows you to view terrestrial maps at street level, terrain based, or from above via satellite imagery. This map view reminds me of ye olde mappes that one would find in a pirate or seafaring game. The below image is a screenshot of the greater Seattle area. Nicely done Google.

An April Fools treasure map display from Google,
the marked spot on this map is a trailhead at Cougar Mountain
near Issaquah, WA

Google's promo video for this feature is very amusing:

Google Takeout

Looks like Google is pulling the cord on its RSS Reader. It isn't as bad as it sounds. There are plenty of other RSS readers out there. Frankly, their RSS works a lot better than say Google News which I wish offered more customization. If you have a lot of subscriptions that you keep up on, say between the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, or the various food or business sections of other major newspapers, keyword or new blog post alerts, Google's other lesser known service Google Takeout lets you download an XML archive of your subscriptions and feed settings.

Takeout isn't limited to just the reader, you could download a backup of Google Drive, Blogger, Picasa, or Youtube for example.

To access Takeout, simply access one of Google's web services, say from Google Reader:

Go to Settings / Reader Settings / select the Import/Export tab

Then click onto the link below which reads: Download your data through Takeout

Bait and Switch

Southwest Airlines' March Facebook campaign is currently promoting $59 one-way flights. Except, I can't fly out from a major metro area to another major metro area for that price. And while $93/flight is a good price, it's not even close to the sweet FB deal. This is a good way to tick off customers who aren't loyal to the brand. What's worse is that the landing page that houses this offer has the cities in alphabetical order; a logical way to default sort it, but the flight prices are so not on "sale" for most one-way flights. I feel like I've been misled, again, by a deceptive sponsored ad.

The sponsored ad starts pretty well with all the right components in it that communicate brand, offer, and a call-to-action.

Sponsored Ad screenshot, 2013-03-08

And then, after the hook (click-through), the experience quickly nosedives into the ground.

Landing page mirrors the FB-pushed ad. Good right? Keep scrolling down...

You think you are going to get a good deal, until you can't actually find a deal for your metro area. Seattle, for example:

If Southwest had used regional ad targeting on FB,
I would not have been pitched this offer.
Maybe? One could only hope social media ad tech advances to this level.