Google Maps Hacks: Foreword by Jens & Lars Rasmussen, Google Maps Tech Leads

by Rich Gibson, Schuyler Erle

Overview

Want to find every pizza place within a 15-mile radius? Where the dog parks are in a new town? The most central meeting place for your class, club or group of friends? The cheapest gas stations on a day-to-day basis? The location of convicted sex offenders in an area to which you may be considering moving? The applications, serendipitous and serious, seem to be infinite, as developers find ever more creative ways to add to and customize the satellite images and underlying API of Google Maps.

Written by Schuyler Erle and Rich Gibson, authors of the popular Mapping Hacks, Google Maps Hacks shares dozens of tricks for combining the capabilities of Google Maps with your own datasets. Such diverse information as apartment listings, crime reporting or flight routes can be integrated with Google's satellite imagery in creative ways, to yield new and useful applications.

The authors begin with a complete introduction to the "standard" features of Google Maps. The adventure continues with 60 useful and interesting mapping projects that demonstrate ways developers have added their own features to the maps. After that's given you ideas of your own, you learn to apply the techniques and tools to add your own data to customize and manipulate Google Maps. Even Google seems to be tacitly blessing what might be seen as unauthorized use, but maybe they just know a good thing when they see one.

With the tricks and techniques you'll learn from Google Maps Hacks, you'll be able to adapt Google's satellite map feature to create interactive maps for personal and commercial applications for businesses ranging from real estate to package delivery to home services, transportation and more. Includes a foreword by Google Maps tech leads, Jens and Lars Rasmussen.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780596101619
Publisher:	O'Reilly Media, Incorporated
Publication date:	01/01/2006
Series:	Hacks
Pages:	366
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.66(d)

About the Author

Rich Gibson is a Perl/Database programmer in Santa Rosa CA. He has worked professionally with computers since 1982 when he created Public Utility Rate Case Models in SuperCalc on an Osborne II. His current fascination is creating tools to aid in the acquisition, management, and presentation of information with a geographic component. He is currently converting an old golf cart into a mobile geo annotation platform.Rich is active with the NoCat Community Network in Sebastopol, California, and is the primary developer of NoCat Maps (http://maps.nocat.net/).

Schuyler Erle is a freelance writer and software engineer. After several years developing web applications for O'Reilly, Schuyler has recently moved on to pursue his interest in free networks, digital cartography, the Semantic Web, and technology for social and political change. He is the chief architect of NoCatAuth, a leading Open Source wireless captive portal. His interest in digital cartography stems from a life-long fascination with maps and mapmaking, coupled with his experience as a co-founder of the NoCat community network in Sonoma County, CA, where he collaborated in the development of geographic analysis tools for wireless networking.

Table of Contents

	Foreword	xi
	Credits	xiii
	Preface	xix
Chapter 1	You Are Here: Introducing Google Maps	1
1	Get Around http://maps.google.com	1
2	Find Yourself (and Others) on Google Maps	6
3	Navigate the World in Your Web Browser	8
4	Get the Bird's-Eye View	12
5	Driven to a Better User Interface	16
6	Share Google Maps	21
7	Inside Google Maps URLs	23
8	Generate Links to Google Maps in a Spreadsheet	27
9	Use del.icio.us to Keep Up with Google Maps	29
Chapter 2	Introducing the Google Maps API	33
10	Add a Google Map to Your Web Site	35
11	Where Did the User Click?	42
12	How Far Is That? Go Beyond Driving Directions	44
13	Create a Route with a Click (or Two)	51
14	Create Custom Map Markers	53
15	Map a Slideshow of Your Travels	59
16	How Big Is the World?	62
Chapter 3	Mashing Up Google Maps	67
17	Map the News	68
18	Examine Patterns of Criminal Activity	70
19	Map Local Weather Conditions	72
20	Track Official Storm Reporting	77
21	Track the International Space Station	82
22	Witness the Effects of a Nuclear Explosion	85
23	Find a Place to Live	88
24	Search for Events by Location	92
25	Track Your UPS Packages	94
26	Follow Your Packets Across the Internet	97
27	Add Google Maps to Any Web Site	102
28	How Big Is That, Exactly?	107
Chapter 4	On the Road with Google Maps	114
29	Find the Best Gasoline Prices	114
30	Stay Out of Traffic Jams	116
31	Navigate Public Transportation	121
32	Locate a Phone Number	125
33	Why Your Cell Phone Doesn't Work There	127
34	Publish Your Own Hiking Trail Maps	129
35	Load Driving Directions into Your GPS	132
36	Get Driving Directions for More Than Two Locations	134
37	View Your GPS Tracklogs in Google Maps	137
38	Map Your Wardriving Expeditions	148
39	Track Your Every Move with Google Earth	155
40	The Ghost in Google Ride Finder	168
41	How Google Maps Got Me Out of a Traffic Ticket	174
Chapter 5	Google Maps in Words and Pictures	177
42	Get More out of What You Read	177
43	Don't Believe Everything You Read on a Map	179
44	You Got Your A9 Local in My Google Maps!	185
45	Share Pictures with Your Community	187
46	Browse Photography by Shooting Location	190
47	Geotag Your Own Photos on Flickr	198
48	Tell Your Community's Story	201
49	Generate Geocoded RSS from Any Google Map	206
50	Geoblog with Google Maps in Thingster	209
Chapter 6	API Tips and Tricks	215
51	Make a Fullscreen Map the Right Way	215
52	Put a Map and HTML into Your Info Windows	219
53	Add Flash Applets to Your Google Maps	222
54	Add a Nicer Info Window to Your Map with TLabel	226
55	Put Photographs on Your Google Maps	229
56	Pin Your Own Maps to Google Maps with TPhoto	233
57	Do a Local Zoom with GxMagnifier	238
58	Find the Right Zoom Level	243
59	Show Lots of Stuff-Quickly	246
60	Make Things Happen When the Map Moves	249
61	Use the Right Developer's Key Automatically	254
Chapter 7	Extreme Google Maps Hacks	260
62	Find the Latitude and Longitude of a Street Address	260
63	Read and Write Markers from a MySQL Database	266
64	Build Custom Icons on the Fly	272
65	Add More Imagery with a WMS Interface	276
66	Add Your Own Custom Map	285
67	Serve Custom Map Imagery	291
68	Automatically Cut and Name Custom Map Tiles	295
69	Cluster Markers at High Zoom Levels	304
70	Will the Kids Barf? (and Other Cool Ways to Use Google Maps)	314
	Index	321