Google Maps hacks

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.

Author Notes

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.

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

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Table of Contents