by Playfuls Staff |
5th April 2007
In an attempt to improve its online map index, Google released a new API that will hopefully turn every Internet citizen into a cartographer.[more]
On Google’s official blog the initiative is explained through the fact that cartography has been a main preoccupation for people since the dawn of humanity. However, writing code isn’t as easy as drawing primitive maps on caves’ walls so Google decided to provide potential enthusiasts with an easy-to-use, point-and-click interface for its newly launched My Maps service.
With My Maps, you can add placemarks, draw lines and shapes, and embed text, photos and videos- all using a simple drag and drop interface. Your map automatically gets a public URL that you can share with your friends and family, or you can also publish your map for inclusion in Google Maps search results.
The local contribution of actual My Maps users will be highlighted with blue pushpins, while organic local search results will be highlighted in red. According to Google, the user-created results will include KML as well as maps made through My Maps.
Google’s My Maps basically lets you share the knowledge that you have about your immediate surroundings or your favorite places, also helping the Mountain View search giant improve its mapping index. You can do that by uploading photos taken in your vicinity, and Google advises you to use their online photo-hosting service, Picasa. Moreover, videos are also accepted, but you’ll obviously have to use either YouTube (which is now a Google property) or Google Video.
Maps that you will make public will be included in the search results on Google Maps and Earth. Private or unlisted maps are maps that you only want to share with a few select people. Unlisted maps will not be included in the search results, so they will be accessible much like an unlisted phone number- anyone who knows the specific URL of the map can view it, but there's no directory or search for finding unlisted maps. However, you will always be able to change the private map’s status, in the settings menu, and vice versa.
Thousands of hybrid maps, often called "mashups," are already available on the Web, documenting everything from local housing markets to active volcanoes.
A mashup is a website or application that combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience. Content used in mashups is typically sourced from a third party via a public interface or API, although some in the community believe that only cases where public interfaces are not used count as mashups. Other methods of sourcing content for mashups include Web feeds (e.g. RSS or Atom) and JavaScript.
Jessica Lee, product manager of Google maps said that “this is a big change. Even if we cut loose all our developers, we could never create maps with the same depth and quality as our users can."
By extending the ability to create Google Maps mashups to regular users, Google wants to significantly increase the amount of data created for its mapping service, Lee said. The more user-generated content that exists for Google Maps, the more useful this mapping search engine will be, she added.
Maps created by users will be saved on Google servers. Each map will have a unique address on the Maps.Google.com domain, Lee said.
If you have Google Earth installed on your computer, you can view your maps in Google Earth. You can click the KML link or icon in the orange title bar and Google Maps uploads a KML file to your computer that you can open in Google Earth.
KML (Keyhole Markup Language) is an XML-based language for managing three-dimensional geospatial data in the program Google Earth, Google Maps and Google Mobile. The KML file specifies a set of features (placemarks, images, polygons, 3D models, textual descriptions, etc.) for display in Google Earth, Maps and Mobile. Each place always has a longitude and a latitude. Other data can make the view more specific, such as tilt, heading, altitude, which together define a "camera view".
KML overlays have been created by casual users as well as by large organizations like Discovery Networks, the US National Park Service, the Smithsonian Institution and National Geographic.
Google's maps already are a big draw, with 22.2 million U.S. visitors during February, according to the most recent data available from comScore Media Metrix. That ranked Google maps third in its category, trailing AOL's Mapquest (45.1 million visitors) and Yahoo (29.1 million visitors).
