MORE GOOGLE MAPS

Google Maps for Mobile Users

2008-12-19T16:27:00.000-05:00

You can take the well known Google Maps functionality from your traditional desktop computer environment to your mobile phone. The mobile phone version is similar to the desktop version still providing many neat features such as draggable maps, determining directions, local listings as well as viewing key features, vector maps, and satellite imagery all together in one interface. The main difference is that Google Maps for mobile users has been designed for users on the go, so it provides other features (like click-to-call) that are specific to mobile phones.

The Google Maps for mobile users application is free to use and can easily be downloaded to your phone and is supported by several hand held devices (check out this list to see if your unit is supported). To download the Google Map application simply visit http://www.google.com/gmm/ on your mobile phone web browser.

Google Maps is free to use from Google, but your mobile service provider may charge data service or internet service rates for downloading and using the application with a limited or no data plan so it is recommended that you contact your carrier for more details.

Google Street View

2008-12-12T08:26:00.004-05:00

Google Street View is a feature of Google Maps that provides 360° horizontal and 290° vertical panoramic street-level views and allows users to view parts of selected cities and their surrounding metropolitan areas at ground level. When it was launched in 2007, it only had five American cities included but it has since expanded to include thousands of locations in the United States, France, Italy, Spain, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

Google Street View displays photos taken from cameras mounted on a fleet of cars and placed in 'image orbs' within Google's maps, displayed against the backdrop of images previously taken from satellite that make up Google's maps. These "image orbs" can be navigated using either the arrow keys on the keyboard or by using a mouse to click on arrows displayed on the screen. Using these devices, the photos can be viewed in different sizes, from any direction, and from a variety of angles. Lines that are displayed along the street that is shown indicate the direction followed by that street view camera car.

More Info on Google Street View

Addding Google maps to your blog or website

2008-11-21T18:10:00.000-05:00

We had a recent question from a viewer on how they could add a map of a certain area to their blog, and have decided to include the response here on our blog for others to read as well.

1. First go to to Google Maps web site (http://maps.google.com) and pan to the location that you want to feature and then zoom into the desired zoom.

2. On the top right corner of the map, click the word "Link" this will open a box below the link with several options in it. Click on the link titled "Customize and preview embedded map" to select some options for your map (sample). After you configure your map to the way that you like it, copy the HTML code from the bottom textbox (title" Copy and paste this HTML to embed in your website") .

3. Paste the custom embeded HTML code into your website or your blog editor.

That is all there is too it, you can still have a simple Google Map on your website or blog, even if you do not want to worry about getting an API for your website and learning to edit code to customize it for your site.

To learn more, see the Google Maps user guide.

You can now include advertising on your Google map

2008-03-01T10:31:00.002-05:00

Google now welcomes and encourages you to monetize your maps mashup through advertising. The map API now provides an ads layer feature via the GAdsManager class, that can display context-relevant ads in an ads layer on your Google map.

These are the same type of ads that appear on some searches on the official Google Maps site. By providing your AdSense for Content publisher ID to GAdsManager, you'll enable the ads layer and make money each time a user clicks on the link in an ad's info window.

You can also add AdSense ad units on the same page as your map mashup, outside of the map, to help your site earn money.

Using the Satellite View in Google Maps

2007-11-27T21:55:00.000-05:00

Google Maps provides much more then just maps, they also have high-resolution images for most urban areas in North America as well as parts of many of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands New Zealand, Australia, Iceland, Japan, and many other countries.

You can turn the high-resolution images on by selecting the satellite button. This then turns the images option on behind the streets of the maps. Although Google uses the word "satellite", some of the high-resolution imagery used is actually airborne aerial photography rather than from satellites

Most of the images shown in Google Maps' satellite mode were taken a year ago or much earlier then that in some places. Basically the images are purchased from image libraries because purchasing more recent images involves much more money and resources.

With the introduction of an easily pannable and searchable mapping and satellite imagery tool, the mapping engine prompted a surge of interest in high resolution imagery. Sites such as Google Sightseeing and Virtual Globetrotting were established which feature satellite images of interesting natural and man-made landmarks, including such novelties as "large type" writing visible in the imagery, as well as famous stadia and unique earth formations.

Google Marker Manager

2007-03-08T16:01:00.000-05:00

When you add a large number of markers to a Google map it tends to slow down the rendering of the map display as well as making it harder to visualize due to all of the clutter. To get around this problem, Google has implemented a marker manager. This utility helps resolve both of these issues, allowing an efficient display of any large number of markers within the same map and also the ability to specify a given zoom level for the markers to appear at.

The Google marker manager offloads management of markers registered with the utility, keeping track of which markers are visible at certain zoom levels within the current view, and passing only these markers to the map for drawing purposes. It monitors the map's current view ports and zoom levels, dynamically adding or removing markers from the map as they become active. By allowing markers to specify the zoom levels at which they display themselves, developers can implement marker clustering. Such management can greatly speed up map rendering and reduce visual clutter. So now you can have a highly informative online map that still is pleasing to the viewer’s eyes and will also be less confusing.

Free application to help add maps to your web site

2006-07-06T13:47:00.000-04:00

As we all know or are probably beginning to learn, Google Maps API code is changing the way that people design and use their websites on the internet. More people are generating great websites that make great use the mapping technology or integrating the application into their current website for similar purposes. For example; now instead of providing a long list of text based directions to your customers, you can set up a web page that will allow them to enter their starting location and then your website can provide detailed directions for them to easily find where your business is actually located. So in a way Google has made it much easier for you to bring potential customers to your business.

Well some people may be wondering how hard it would be for them to incorporate or add the Google Maps API functionality to their web site. Well for most web sites that are designed and managed by web designer whom have a pretty good idea of the various coding languages, we recommend that they go to the Google Maps API section of the Google website directly and start there because this would be the better option for them. However for the average beginner or person with a small business website, we have found a simple web tool that can get them started.

Get a Hold of Me website offers a simple form based web tool that has been designed to generate the proper Google Maps API code for you that you can simply cut and paste into a HTML or PHP web page and not worry about really understanding how it works. This tool is very basic and allows you to enter some simple parameters (which we will cover later on) and that is basically it. If you do not have a Google Maps API code for your website then it will still work on their web site but will not work when you copy and paste it onto yours, however you get an API code for free from Google. So all you really need to do is, sign up with Google for a free API code, fill in the Get a Hold of Me is a simple form, generate the html/AJAX code and paste it into your website. Yes that is it; you will only have a basic Google Map page, but we will provide tips and techniques later on to help you customize this page.

Do not have a website yet but would like to start one at low affordable prices? Well we recommend then that you check out HostPit.com where you can easily get started with your website and then incorporate your Google Maps for less then you probably imagined.

Google Maps - the basics

2006-06-20T13:25:00.001-04:00

Google Maps, for those that may not know is a free, web map server application provided by Google and is currently powering many of the webs map based services such as Google Ride Finder and embedded maps on thousands of third-party websites via their API code. The online map tool offers street maps, satellite imagery, a route planner and a business locator for many large urban centers.

It features a versatile yet simple map view that can be panned around and zoomed in to show detailed street information. Users can easily control the map using a standard computer mouse or arrow keys to move to the desired location. It is also very powerful and incorporates Google’s powerful search abilities allowing users to enter an address, street intersection or name of an area into a text box and then the map view will quickly find that location on the map. Another great feature is the ability of creating driving directions from one place to another. It gives the user a step by step list of how to get to their destination, along with an estimate of the time required to reach it and the distance between the two locations.

Google Maps offers three view modes by default: a map view, a satellite image view and a hybrid view (with street maps overlaid on top of satellite images).

We recommend that you go check out Google Maps and see this application for your self, as this is the base technology that many of the sites that we feature on our site will be based upon. Virtually paving the road for many great web sites to come!