June 14, 2007
Google Maps Applications
I'm sure everyone is onto Google Maps by now, and you may have also noticed that lots of people have the Google Maps Interface on their own websites. Google has done a great job of sharing the API for their interface and allowed other people to build applications using Google Maps data. Here are some examples, some of which you might have already heard about.
Google Maps Pedometer allows you to mark out a path by hand and find the length. This is useful if you are marking a path you take for a jog or a bike ride, and you want to estimate the distance you travelled. If you cross areas where there are no roads you can switch to the hybrid or satellite view to use landmarks or the terrain to guide you. There are several website in the same vein as this one, and many of them also retrieve elevation data to show you the change in height you went through along your path.
If you need very specific data on weather conditions, then there are a few sites that integrate Google Maps to deliver you precise condition information. Weather Underground (centered on Austin) has tons of independent weather stations that report conditions back to the website. So if you want to tell whether it rained much on a field or a golf course (Pease Park, for example) in the past 24 hours, you can find the station nearest your location, and then see what the weather history has been like.
WeatherBonk has most of the same information, since Weather Underground data is openly available but it also adds a neat feature where weather radar is overlaid on a Google Maps interface. (shown in the picture above, where it's raining over Downtown Austin) I used to try to zoom in on Weather Underground's radar and try to guess where things were by distance from the major roads, but this is much better. Also Weatherbonk integrates nearby outdoor webcams to give you an idea of what it looks like at the location also.
World Wide Webfoot integrates a bunch of publicly available census data into a Google Maps interface, which gives you a neat view of demographics in an area.
If you have a java-capable phone with internet access you can access Google Maps for Mobile, which was released by Google itself. Better yet, if your phone is GPS capable, you can download a third party appilcation, Mobile Gmaps. It integrates GPS tracking into the mapping feature, and can even do things like save/load location files or ping Gmap-Track to save your location as you move. Both Mobile Gmaps and Gmap-Track are currently under development so more features will be coming in the future. Mobile GMaps GPS feature even works on my Samsung A900 (Sprint), where other third party GPS apps wouldn't work. (Credit to Dan for informing me about MGmaps)