Google lets users create own maps

Google is out to make map-making simpler, giving away tools for ordinary users to pinpoint locations, draw routes and attach photos or video to existing online maps, the company said yesterday.

The Web search leader, which set off an explosion of creative map-making among professional programmers after introducing Google Maps two years ago, is now offering MyMaps, tools for everyday users to create maps in a few mouse clicks.

Let your imagination run wild, spatially speaking: Pinpoint your favorite restaurant locations. Return from a world tour and plot out landmarks along the way. Take photos from a recent hike and use MyMaps to illustrate locations along the trail.

"Who better to create maps than local experts?" Jessica Lee, product manager for Google Maps, said in an interview. "MyMaps makes map-making universally accessible to anyone."

Creators of custom maps can publish them so other users can find them when searching Google Maps. Users of Google Local search will now see relevant user-generated MyMaps show up in a special section along with traditional commercial results.

Or they can choose to leave their MyMaps unlisted for personal use or to share with a select group of friends.

See the new features by clicking on the MyMaps tab now available at Google Maps.

MyMaps can also feature YouTube videos or other snippets of Web content in small windows that appear when a user clicks on pinpointed location. Anyone comfortable with the trick of adding small bits of hypertext code to a Web site or blog or MySpace profile can add video to MyMaps in just a few clicks.

Text or pictures

Feeling uninspired? Just search out an address on Google Maps and add MyMaps locations automatically to anyone of your existing maps by clicking the button that appears saying "Save to MyMaps".

Instead of telling stories in chronological fashion using text or pictures, map-making this easy allows people to narrate their lives location-by-location.

Lee describes how one Google employee recreated their resume on MyMaps, where each job or education entry was pinpointed by location.

Leave it to a Google engineer to create a map featuring the locations where great computer languages were invented in recent decades: http://tinyurl.com/2n5or3/

Another more fanciful example charts monster sightings worldwide, from Godzilla to Dracula, Mummy, the Blob, King Kong and Bigfoot, Lee said. MyMaps is initially available in the US and the national versions of Google in nine other countries including Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands and Spain.

Google Working To Make iPod/iTunes for Books

My opinion:
Today's tech just makes for a not very pleasing alternative to a paper-based book. And who want a book that withholds its content because the battery has gone dead? I am glad Google is working to digitize books that have not yet been digitized. And more text online makes a more showcases for Google ads. But I do not see digital book tech being there any time soon. The technology of paper-based books is just too difficult to exceed while pleasing the regular reader.

Use the Google Talk gadget like a real client

Microsoft, Google and Yahoo support GeoRSS

KML and GeoRSS Support Added to the Google Maps API
One of the things I love most about Google Maps and Google Earth is that it's easy for anyone to create and display new geographically referenced content. Whether it's pictures from your vacation, favorite places on the globe, or the hiking trails you like to visit, all you have
to do is create a KML file (using Google Earth or any other tool) and load it up. This idea that you can view data from external sources inside Google Maps and Earth is really exciting to us, and I'm pleased to announce two major new features in this area.
To start we now support GeoRSS as a data format for geographic content in Google Maps. We want to enable users to create data in whatever format is most convenient for them, and feel that by supporting both KML and GeoRSS we can enable a wider variety of people and applications to contribute content to Google Maps. We've built support for the Simple, GML, and W3C Geo encodings of GeoRSS -- all you have to do is enter the full URL of a GeoRSS file into the Maps query box to load the file. For example, take a look at SlashGeo's GeoRSS on Google Maps.
Most importantly, we've extended support for displaying geographic data -- both KML and GeoRSS -- into the Google Maps API. Now in addition to programatically adding content to a Maps API site, you can create your content as KML or GeoRSS and load it into the Map with a simple function call. This means that the more than 1 million KML files that are available from all over the web can easily be mashed up with the map on your site. For example, you can add some vacation photos from Japan with the following code:
var gx = new GGeoXml("http://kml.lover.googlepages.com/my-vacation-photos.kml");
map.addOverlay(gx);

This makes it easier for API sites to maintain content in a flexible format that can be accessed via the API or in
a number of other tools directly, and makes it simpler to create a rich API site with declarative content, instead
of a lot of code.
Below is an example that shows KML and GeoRSS layers rendered on a Google Maps API powered map. You can toggle on and off the sample layers, or feel free to enter a URL to your favorite KML or GeoRSS content and hit the 'Add' button to see it on the map.