Essential Resources for Google Maps

Google Maps is one of the web technologies that take the web to the next level. When Google introduced Google Maps with searchable and pannable interface, and recently released the API for adding implementation on the map, it creates many interest from users and developers.

Now information on the web does not need to bind to “what” and “how” already. Your piece of information can be also represent “where” with Google Maps.

For our readers, I want to provide some greatest implementations on Google Maps, to speed up your retrieval of information on “where”. This is the essential top resources for Google Maps.

If you got suggestions of other tools and resources, feel free to recommend. I will add them to the list if I see fit.

Top 10 Google Maps implementations:

CheapGas
“Getting best prices in your city. It is comprised of 170 gas price information web sites that help consumers find low gasoline prices. Powered by GasBuddy.”

Geobloggers
“geobloggers is a site that’s built upon two great technologys. Google Maps takes care of the mapping side and Flickr takes care of the image hosting, scaling, and so on. geobloggers mushes those two together.”

Gmaps Pedometer
“This is a little hack that uses Google’s superb mapping application to help record distances traveled during a running or walking workout.”

Google-Yahoo Traffic-Weather Map
Combined with Yahoo Traffic Feed with Google Map to show traffic condition.

Weather Bonk
“Weather maps lets you view real time weather information on a google map. This can provide some very interesting information, particularly in areas with microclimates, such as San Francisco. For example, summer in San Francisco can be particularly cold and foggy, and this map can help you to find a sunnier area of the city to visit. Clicking on the web cams give you a visual observation from a given location. Looking at wind direction can help you locate approaching weather fronts.”

Global Coordinate
“The idea behind globalcoordinate.com is to take a number of common but different web applications and put them together. You will find here an atlas, weblogs, photo-blogs, travel guides, weather reports, news sources, etc. The objective is to let users find the synergies between these concepts.”

Cell Phone Reception and Tower Search
“Consumers can search for the best carrier in their area. And with our graphical tower location search, users can pinpoint nearby tower locations. Even to the exact rooftop with satellite imagery and the help of Google Maps!”

Housing Maps
Powered by Craigslist. This Google Maps visualize where to buy houses, rent rooms around US

Tagzania
“Tagzania is about tags and places. If you register and log in, you can add places, points, to create and document your maps. When you add a point, you may tag it with keywords. That way, Tagzania is not only a place to build and keep your own maps, shared territories are created as well.”

gWiFi: Using GoogleMaps to find free WiFi
“This website is an attempt to make it easier for the road-warrior’s, students, free loaders etc to find locations that offer free wireless internet access in the New York City area by showing all free wireless nodes on a Map of New York.”

Worth to mention:

Track visitors to your website using Google Maps
“Lets you track the visitors to your website using Google Maps.”

Earthquakes in the last week
“Earthquakes of magnitude 2.5 or greater in the last 7 days. Click on the menu bar to choose a new map view or create your own view by clicking to re-center the map and then zooming in to get a closer look. Click ‘link to this page’ and then bookmark the new url so you can return to your new custom view.”

Whereis
“Geolocate where the server is on Google Maps from an URL.”

ZippyWeather
“Live Australian Weather.”

Tools:

gMap it!
“gMap it is a mozilla Firefox extension that allows you to find directions from google maps based on publicly listed phone numbers.”

MapBuilder
“MapBuilder lets you build your own map with number of location and generate GoogleMap source code for this map. So you will be able to paste it directly into your web page and use it with your API key requested at Google http://www.google.com/apis/maps/signup.html. After creating your own map you will be able to save all locations with related information for future use. It means that you’ll be able to make some improvements for your map later.”

HOW-TO: Make your own annotated multimedia Google map
“This how-to will show you how to make your own annotated Google map from your own GPS data. Plus, you’ll be able to tie in images and video to create an interactive multimedia map. We’ll walk you through the steps we took to generate an annotated map of a walk we took recently through our hometown, now that it’s actually starting to get warm enough to want to walk about!”

Hacking Maps with the Google Maps API
Great guide on Google Maps API and how to make your own map implementation

MapKi
“This is meant to be a forum for sharing ideas, implementations, and help for the Google Maps API (http://www.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/). Any user can add to or edit any of the pages on the site, just like any wiki site.”

Google Maps on your Website
A how-to guide on putting a interactive map on your site

Resources:

Google Maps Mania
“An unofficial Google Maps blog tracking the websites, ideas and tools being influenced by Google Maps.”

Google Maps on Wikipedia
Good set of information on Google Maps by Wikipedia

Google Maps Group

Google Sightseeing
A blog introduces some interesting place to look at by using Google Maps’ screenshots

Die Dulci Fruere