Online maps date to the early days of the Web, and accurate signals from the Global Positioning System have been available to consumers for half a decade.

But until just recently, there wasn't much overlap between these technologies: very little of the information on the Web was keyed to specific geographic coordinates, and anyway, few people carried the location-aware devices that could retrieve such information. But that's beginning to change: an increasing number of wireless Internet-connected devices have built-in GPS and other location-finding technologies, and -- just as important -- the Web itself is being restructured to complement the actual geography around us.