Last year Google got cozy with the MTA with the launch of transit directions inside of Google Maps. Today the Google Maps team has announced the launch of a new layer on Google Maps that displays all of the NYC subway routes directly on the map. There have been many mashups that created something similar in the past but now the subway lines are displayed directly on the map. So far I haven’t been able to find any errors in the lines and/or stations. I am sure my fellow railfans will find any errors this weekend.

The new subway map lines also work on the mobile version of Google Maps. Google notes that they provide transit directions for 436 transit agencies around the world.

While the subway lines on the map are nice, nothing beats the Swiss Rail mashup that shows the trains in real-time and they actually move on the map!

Below are some of the latest jobs posted on the CenterNetworks Job Board. Subscribe to the CN Jobs feed and get all of the latest Web industry jobs delivered directly to you.

Featured Job:

• Web Designer at Investor’s Business Daily

More Jobs:

• Product Support Manager at Patch
• Experience Lead at HUGE
• Interaction Designer at GravityTank
• Front End Web Developer at Gucci
• Executive/Senior Web Producer at Scholastic

Employers – Join other top companies on the CN Job Board. Post your jobs today – only $10!

We first covered Canadian-startup CityFlitz last September. We learned about the car sharing service via the FreshBooks blog. CityFlitz is a car-sharing service offered in Canada. The concept of car sharing, popularized by ZipCar, is based around many people sharing a bank of cars. I use ZipCar about once a week and think it’s a great service as they take care of everything and I just pay for the hours I use the car.

CityFlitz tried a more involved business model than ZipCar employs. CityFlitz wrapped each of their cars with advertising and then only charged members $1/day to use the car (gas not included). ZipCar has a maximum mileage per rental period while CityFlitz wants you to drive as much as possible so that the advertisements are seen around town. If you drive less than 30km per day with CityFlitz, you are charged a penalty. CityFlitz cars also come with WiFi inside the car which is pretty neat.

We received a couple of emails today about CityFlitz and that their domain name is no longer functional. When we load CityFlitz.com, we are redirected to what appears to be a web hosting provider. I’ve tried to email the company but so far no response. If I receive a response, I will update this post. In my initial review I wondered if the company would be able to sign enough advertisers to support the cars as a going concern.

In July, Esteban reported that CityFlitz was expanding to Montreal. He also noted that advertisers were paying $7,000 a month on average for advertising on the fleet of cars.

One member left a comment on our initial post noting that CityFlitz charged a security deposit of $350 (unsure if it’s CAD or USD) and the member has been unable to receive a refund. There are two additional comments on the CityFlitz Facebook page also regarding the security deposit. You can read the full terms using the Google Cache. Let’s hope this is just a temporary issue.

I like the concept that CityFlitz used and maybe the way to make it work is to charge a minimum fee for the car rentals that equals the bottom-line cost and use the advertising as the profit. I might be willing to drive around in a advertising wrapped ZipCar if I received enough of a discount to make it worthwhile.

Here are today’s startup updates – congrats to the world champion NY Yankees – 27th series title, 1st in the brand new Yankee Stadium. If you are reading this on the feed, click inside and check out the new CN logo.

• How to Boost Ad Revenue: Speed is Your Secret Weapon – BuySellAds
• Drop.io Outlook Plugin Release – Drop.io
• I’m starting out in Email Marketing. Should I buy an email list? - Toddle
• Alice makes it even easier to find the best price – Alice
• Dropbox is to Ubuntu as eucalyptus is to koalas - Dropbox

For over a decade I was responsible for posting financial documents either online or, before the Internet, to a variety of reporting sources. One thing was absolutely clear…post early and it won’t be pretty. Financial documents have associated post times and if the content was to be posted early (or late), it could affect the financial markets (e.g. stock trades, etc.). I can’t even count how many times I had to be up at midnight or later to make sure content went to the correct sources at the precise time. Not once did I enter a client document into any CMS system early because no matter how much we want to be careful, the content was just too sensitive to create a timed post.

It is amazing to read story after story about a blog that has broken an embargo or an agreed-to timed post because of “a problem with the clock in Wordpress.” I am not going to name any names because sadly the list would be pretty long. We’ve seen some bloggers make one mistake and use the “Wordpress” excuse while others have used the same excuse for nearly a week of “early” postings.

So bloggers…come really close to your monitor…I am going to teach you the secret, free of charge to make sure that your timed posts never go live ahead of time.

Most of the larger blogs have multiple team members and people working in multiple time zones. There is absolutely no excuse for pre-posting before the agreed to time, period. Some might say that a story is placed into the content management system so that it can be edited by the team. I say hogwash – use Google Docs or Zoho, etc. to edit the story. This is actually preferred as it’s easier to see the edits by each team member or blog editor.

If you are a single blog author or don’t have a teenager working for you, then stay awake to make the post live manually at the specified time. Unlike the financial documents I noted above, most tech news story embargoes are issued at a reasonable time.

Bottom line – never use CMS timed posts when an agreement is in place. See how simple that is? Remember, trust is earned.

And then ya’all can stop blaming Wordpress.

This morning I spent some time at the ad:tech online advertising conference in NYC at the Javits Center. Thank goodness they finally moved out of the Hilton. I will have a post later about my thoughts from the expo floor.

Judging from the length of the line, as shown in the video below, the online advertising industry must be out of the recession and ready for major growth. Either that or there was no plan for how to handle that most conference attendees would want to, you know, actually enter the conference. Now that I think about it and listening to people on the line, it is definitely the latter. There are actually two lines like the one in the video below. As of Noon today, the line appeared to be at least 75 minutes long. Lots of people seemed pissed that they paid anywhere from $35-$1,800 and had to wait for their badge. I assume by this afternoon they will have this registration issue resolved. Let’s hope that the Web 2.0 check-in process will be smoother later this month.

If you decide to watch the video, please note that there is a lot of camera shake.
Read the rest of this entry »

Here are today’s startup and entrepreneurial updates:

• Microsoft calls Zoho the “Fake Office”, so does that mean Bing is … – Zoho
• Productive at 36,000 feet - Saas 2.0
• Does Slow Growth Equal Slow Death? – Inc
• Lessons from Rackspace’s downtime – Jacob Kaplan-Moss
• What I Used To Know Isn’t Good Enough - dy/dan
• Job of the day: Web Designer at Investor’s Business Daily