Happy Birthday Google Maps API !!!

Mappybirthday

Today the Google Maps API celebrates its 5 year anniversary! Happy Birthday Google Maps API!!!

Five years ago the world was amazed when Paul Rademacher's released his Craigslist and Google Maps mashup. Google themselves were so impressed with Paul's hack that they decided to let everyone have a go at creating their own Google Maps mashup by releasing the Google Maps API.

It is a testament to the support that Google has provided to the API and to map developers over the years that Google Maps mashups still regularly become front page news. In the UK alone, and in just the last few days, Google Maps mashups have featured in national newspaper The Telegraph and London newspaper The Metro (Historypin and CASA's New Urban Landscapes respectively).

When Google asked me at the end of last week if I would help to produce a map of some of the Google Maps that have been created over the years with the Google Maps API I was delighted to say 'yes'! Mappybirthday.appspot is the result of my efforts (with quite a lot of help from Google).

The map shows the locations of over 300 Google Maps mashups. If I had another week available I would be able to add at least another 300 mashups to the map. I don't have another week so I apologise to all those wonderful maps that have been missed off.

But don't worry! You can add a map to mappybirthday.appspot yourself. Just click on the "Join in the celebration ... pin your mashup to the map!" link underneath the map and enter the details of your map.


When you have done that - take a deep breathe because the next five years starts today! Go check out the Google Maps API v3 (if you haven't done so already) ... start creating your next mashup ... and keep submitting your maps to Google Maps Mania.

Happy Birthday Google Maps API! Let's hope the next five years are just as exciting.

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Add a Contextual Menu to Your Google Map

ContextMenuControl Utility Library

Wolfgang Pichler has released a really cool open-sourced utility library to add a right-click contextual menu to a map developed with the Google Maps API.

The contextual menu includes options to get directions, zoom in or out, center the map and find out 'What's here?'. In fact it mirrors very closely what you get if you right click on a map at maps.google.com.

To add the control to your own maps all you need to do is include the script tag for the source code and add the control with:

  map.addControl(new ContextMenuControl());

For more information, read through the reference and developer's guide.


Via: Google Geo Developers Blog

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Plot Routes Around a Central Point

Some Experiments with Google Maps
This morning I've been revisiting the Google Maps experiments on maps.forum.nu. This site has some great examples of what can be achieved with the Google Maps API.

I particularly like these two Google Maps examples which could be very useful for anyone thinking of building a route planner with the Google Maps API.

POIs Along a Route

This route planning map can show you points of information along your route. So, for example, the map can show you all fast food outlets along your route. Alternatively you could build a map that showed all gas stations along a route.

Driving Radius Map

This is a cool experiment to show driving routes that lead to 30 miles around a given point. If you click on the map the map will load routes around that location that will take you 30 miles away.

I can see a few practical applications for this experiment. If you used it in conjunction with walking directions or biking directions you could load suggested routes around a point. You could allow the user to define the route distance so, for example, you could show the user a number of ten mile bike rides or hikes around any given point.

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Add Style to Your Google Maps

Styled Maps

The latest enhancement to the Google Maps API is Map Styling.

Map Styling allows developers to modify the look of the base map tiles, both in terms of what features are shown, and the colour scheme. This means that developers can change the look of their maps to suit the colour-schemes of their websites.

You can see some example styled maps on this demo page.

You can also use the Styled Map wizard to experiment with different styles, and generate the Styled Map definitions to use in your Maps API application.

The Mood of our Cities Now

NBC Local Media have used the new Styled Maps feature to show the most emotional stories of the day.

The map animates through news stories and displays the location of the story with the color correlating to how the majority of users felt about that story.

Via: Google Geo Developers Blog

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Place Pages on Google Maps

In what has been a busy day of announcements about new features for the Google Maps API we have two more:

• The Google Places Web Service
• Directions Web Service

The Google Places Web Service

The Places Web Service is a new web service Google will launch in July, 2010.

The Google Places Web Service is a service that returns information about a 'place' using an HTTP request.

The Nearby Places widget is a user interface element that will launch in the Google Maps API v3. It combines the W3C Geolocation API with location based Place search to present the user with a list of Places in their immediate vicinity. The user can select a Place which the Maps API application can use as a check-in, or to tag content supplied by the user about that place. The application can also obtain more detailed information about the Place, such as the address, telephone number, and Place Page URL.

Directions Web Service

The Directions Web Service is a companion to the existing Geocoding and Elevation Web Services, and allows applications to obtain Driving, Bicycling, and Walking directions through an XML/JSON REST interface.

All of the features of the Map API v3 Directions service are supported, including “avoid highways”, “avoid tolls”, and waypoint optimization (travelling salesman solver). For more information, check out the Directions Web Services documentation.

You don't need to use the Directions Web Service with Google Maps. In fact you don't even need a Google Maps API key to use the service.

Via: Google Geo Developers Blog

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Street View in Maps API v3

Street View Maps API v3 Demo

Street View has been added to the Google Maps API v3.

To add a Street View overlay to a API v3 map just add 'streetViewControl: true,' to your map code.

Street View in Maps API v3 uses HTML rather than Flash. The Street View layer in v3 also has the capability of showing your map markers directly in the Street View.

If you open up the demo that I've created and drop Pegman onto Westminster Bridge you can see how the map markers on the map can also be seen from within Street View.

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Google Maps API v3

The first maps related announcement from Google I/O is the graduation of the Google Maps API v3. Google say that the Maps API v3 is now the recommended version for all new Maps API application development.

As part of the Google Maps API v3 graduation to the principal maps API Street View has been added to the Maps API v3.

Street View in v3 is entirely implemented in HTML in order to accommodate all of the mobile devices on which v3 is supported. In v2 of the Google Maps API Street View relied on Flash.



Microformats.dk seems to be the first to produce a working demo of the new Street View feature in v3. Right click on the Street View in the demo - see no Flash!

The Maps API v2 will now be deprecated along with Mapplets (which is based on v2). This means that no further feature development is planned for these two APIs. However, Google will maintain and support applications using these APIs for at least three years consistent with the deprecation policy detailed in the Maps API Terms of Service.

Via: Google Geo Developers Blog

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Google's New Geocoding Web Service

Google Geocoding Web Service

Google have today announced a new Geocoding Web Service. Geocoding is the process of converting postal addresses into geographic coordinates (latitude and longitude), so that you can place markers on a Google Maps mashup.

The new geocoding service enables the precaching of geocoded results so that developers can cache the results on a server, and serve the locations to their Google Maps mashups. This ensures that the map does not need to geocode the address of a property every time it is viewed by a user.

Developers do not require a Maps API key to use the Geocoding Web Service. 2,500 requests may be sent to the Geocoding Web Service per day from a single IP address. The Geocoding Web Service can provide output in both XML and JSON.

Via: Google Geo Developers Blog

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Google Maps Altitude Meter & Auto Suggest

Mapperz this week has spotted a couple of very interesting experiments with the Google Maps API.

Terrain Tile Layer

Bill Chadwick has put together this demo of a Google Map that has an altitude indicator to show the altitude at any point on the map.

As you move you mouse cursor around on the map the altitude indicator updates to show the altitude at each location. The demo uses a terrain tile server hosted on Google App Engine to serve tiles of terrain data. There is very good correspondence with the Google Maps Terrain layer contours which are obtained from the same 3 arc second SRTM data.

Google Geocoder Suggests

Esa, a Google Maps API guru from Finland, has put together this Google Maps API demo of a search box with geocoding suggestions. As you type into the search box possible locations, based on what you type, are displayed.

In the example above you can see the suggestions that appear when you type 'Lo'. The suggestions update the more you type. If you add an 'n' to the 'Lo' the suggestions change to reflect the added letter.

When you click on one of the suggestions the accompanying Google Map centres on the chosen location.


Via: Mapperz

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