Thor Mitchell

Earlier this year we an­nounced the dep­re­ca­tion of Google Mapplets. As part of the dep­re­ca­tion plan for Mapplets we will short­ly be switch­ing from ren­der­ing Mapplets with­in Google Maps, to ren­der­ing them on a ded­i­cat­ed Mapplets page: http://maps.google.com/maps/map­plets?mod­uleurl=http://www.google.com/ig/mod­ules/geo­scratch­pad.xml In con­junc­tion with this tran­si­tion the Google Maps Directory will be closed, and links to Mapplets will be re­moved from the My Maps tab in Google Maps. (...)

We’re al­ways look­ing to im­prove the ac­cu­ra­cy of our maps and the val­ue of the ser­vices we of­fer around them. To do that we need to have the best qual­i­ty map data pos­si­ble, and we be­lieve that no­body knows the world around them bet­ter than our users. For this rea­son we’re al­ways ex­cit­ed when we can up­date our maps and en­able users to par­tic­i­pate in im­prov­ing them, as we have pre­vi­ous­ly in the United States and Canada. Today we’re adding Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Liechtenstein, (...)

The Maps Data API is be­ing dep­re­cat­ed and will no longer be avail­able after January 31st 2011. For more in­for­ma­tion, in­clud­ing how to pre­serve your data and al­ter­na­tive so­lu­tions, read on... When the Maps Data API was launched in Google Code Labs last year, it pro­vid­ed de­vel­op­ers with a scal­able dis­tribut­ed plat­form for host­ing geospa­tial data. Since then we have re­ceived a lot of valu­able feed­back from de­vel­op­ers, such as the need for vi­su­al­i­sa­tion of host­ed data in Maps API (...)

One of the first ques­tions we were asked fol­low­ing the Google I/O ses­sion at which we launched Styled Maps in the JavaScript Maps API ear­lier this year was whether the fea­ture would al­so be of­fered in the Maps API for Flash. Since then we have seen par­tic­u­lar in­ter­est from the cre­ative arts com­mu­ni­ty, and from news or­ga­ni­za­tions who use Flash be­cause it en­ables rapid de­vel­op­ment in re­spon­se to un­fold­ing events, and who would val­ue a sim­pli­fied base map to quick­ly fo­cus the read­er's (...)

One of my favourite new fea­tures added to the Maps API this year is the Elevation ser­vice in the Maps API v3. This was in part be­cause I en­joyed play­ing with the launch de­mo far too much, but most­ly be­cause the ser­vice opened up op­por­tu­ni­ties for gen­uine­ly new and in­ter­est­ing ap­pli­ca­tions that were not pre­vi­ous­ly pos­si­ble. For this rea­son I am de­light­ed to an­nounce that we have now al­so added the Elevation ser­vice to the Maps API for Flash, pro­vid­ing our ActionScript de­vel­op­ers with the (...)

At the Google I/O de­vel­op­er con­fer­ence ear­lier this year we pre­viewed the Places API, a new ser­vice that will al­low ap­pli­ca­tions to search for Places, and ob­tain de­tailed in­for­ma­tion about in­di­vid­u­al places se­lect­ed by users. At that time we post­ed doc­u­men­ta­tion and pro­vid­ed an Application Form that de­vel­op­ers can use to indi­cate their in­ter­est in us­ing the API. We have been de­light­ed with the en­thu­si­asm we have seen for the Places API, and the in­no­va­tive ways in which de­vel­op­ers would (...)

If you have ev­er tried to plot a very large num­ber of over­lays on an API map you have prob­a­bly reached a point at which the per­for­mance of your ap­pli­ca­tion be­gins to suf­fer. With one hun­dred or so mark­ers, most browsers cope just fine, and clus­ter­ing so­lu­tions like Fluster can help sup­port more. But if you have thou­sands of over­lays that you wish to show, ren­der­ing them in­di­vid­u­al­ly can be prob­lem­at­ic. The Maps API v3 now of­fers two so­lu­tions to this prob­lem. If you have a large vol­ume of (...)

Google Maps are in­stant­ly fa­mil­iar to mil­lions of Internet users world­wide. The user in­ter­face and the look and feel of our maps com­bine to en­sure that when a user sees a Google map on any web site, they in­stant­ly know how to in­ter­act with that map, and find their way around. There is how­ev­er an unavoid­able con­se­quence of this con­sis­ten­cy. No mat­ter which Maps API site you are on, ev­ery map looks the same. If you want your map to stand out from the crowd, your op­tions are lim­it­ed to (...)

If some­one asked you where you are right now, how would you an­swer? Would you say that you are at home, or at work? Maybe you are in a for­eign coun­try, in the park, or at your favourite cof­fee shop. These are just a few of the many places by which we nav­i­gate through our dai­ly lives. Maps ap­pli­ca­tions may see the world in terms of lat­i­tudes and lon­gi­tudes, but we think in terms of ‘Places’. In September of last year Google launched Place Pages on Google Maps. Each Place Page con­sol­i­dates (...)

Google I/O is al­ways a fan­tas­tic op­por­tu­ni­ty for the Maps API team to meet face to face with some of the many Maps API de­vel­op­ers world­wide. We be­lieve our de­vel­op­er com­mu­ni­ty is one of the biggest strengths of the Google Maps API, and with over 350,000 web sites ac­tive­ly us­ing the Maps API, there is no short­age of skilled and help­ful ex­per­tise to tap in­to. However Google I/O is not the on­ly way in which we en­gage with de­vel­op­ers. The Google Maps API Google Groups are thriv­ing (...)

A year ago at Google I/O, we in­tro­duced the Maps API v3, a new JavaScript Maps API built from the ground up to of­fer a clean, fast, and pow­er­ful maps ap­pli­ca­tion de­vel­op­ment plat­form for both desk­top web browsers and mo­bile de­vices. The v3 API has come a long way since then, with reg­u­lar up­dates to in­tro­duce new fea­tures. Some, such as poly­li­nes, poly­gons, driv­ing di­rec­tions, and KML were fa­mil­iar from the Maps API v2. Others, such as el­e­va­tion, bi­cy­cling di­rec­tions, and op­ti­mised (...)

A com­mon op­er­a­tion in Maps API ap­pli­ca­tions is to search a spa­tial database for lo­ca­tions with­in a cer­tain dis­tance of a point. It can al­so be use­ful to of­fer search along a route, for ex­am­ple to find ho­tels, restau­rants, or ser­vice sta­tions on a long jour­ney. However if your spa­tial database does not sup­port cor­ri­dor queries this can be dif­fi­cult to im­ple­ment ef­fi­cient­ly. For ex­am­ple search­ing around ev­ery ver­tex of a route will gen­er­ate a large num­ber of queries which over­lap, while al­so (...)

Since be­ing for­mal­ized as an Open Geospatial Consortium stan­dard, KML has be­come some­thing of a lin­gua fran­ca for geospa­tial in­for­ma­tion. From hum­ble be­gin­nings in Google Earth, KML sup­port can now be found in a wide va­ri­ety of map­ping prod­ucts and ser­vices. Today we’re hap­py to add Maps API v3 to this list with the in­tro­duc­tion of the new KmlLayer class. The KmlLayer class en­ables KML or GeoRSS files that are host­ed on pub­licly ac­ces­si­ble web sites to be ren­dered in a Maps API v3 (...)