Advertising - North Face Campaign Sends Texts When Shoppers Near Stores - NYTimes.com

There is a lot of attention focused on maps that we can generate online. Whether it be Google, or another, there are lots of ways that we can use that technology to find places, most often, or - if ambitious enough - to create maps with various locations noted on them.

Seeing the map here - and it is in black and white print in the printed The New York Times today - makes me wonder if printed newspapers are not missing the map boat.

Why not, for example, run a map of all of the newspaper's advertisers today that are promoting special offers in their print ads?

Or, a map of all of the music events either mentioned or advertised in today's paper for this evening?

Or a news map of the local area showing where any stories that have geographical points in them are connected?

I don't recall seeing that, or at least seeing it such that I took note.

There are many more possibilities. I realize that occasionally a newspaper will run a map with a story. That's good and often very helpful.

But how about something that brings more of the paper together, reinforcing what's valuable and how much of it today's paper contains.

Tearing out the local maps to pursue items reported or businesses advertised could become a new way to make full use of the printed newspaper.