Feb 6, 2007
Andre Lewis has just written a book for Apress, ‘Google Maps with Rails and Ajax: from Novice to Professional’ (or something very similar). He presented some of the discoveries he made whilst writing the book at the Googleplex just before Christmas. Fortunately, Google have just stumped up $2 billion to make videos available online, so you can view his presentation here…Ruby And Google.
I really liked the video, he touches on some of the functionality not available with the Google Maps API ‘out of the box’, namely…
- How to ‘display’ thousands of markers on the same map
- How to build your own geo-coder
- How to build you own custom ‘Zoom In’ control for Google Maps
Feb 2, 2007
Google yesterday released Google Maps for Windows Mobile. Take a wander to Google Mobile to find out more, or point your mobile device to http://www.google.com/gmm to download the application itself.
First impressions are good. The .cab download was <1mb and installation on my SPV C600 was straightforward. Fire it up and as I might expect I get the option of viewing map or satellite image (usefully google have included what they call an ‘Insta-KB-o-meter’ allowing you to view your data consumption in real-time). As well as the usual ‘find location’ and ‘find nearby businesses’ Google also bundle real-time traffic updates, although at the time of writing this service was unavailable in Central London… Of particular interest is the ability of the app to integrate with contacts. If a contact has a valid address, hit select and up comes a map of where they live. I can also get directions and distances from one address to another as Google Maps for Windows Mobile provides routing much like its web counterpart. But perhaps the most useful feature is the applications GPS support. Were my smartphone to have a GPS chipset I would be able to track my location on the Google Map and I suspect get directions to a location / address of my choice…
The faithful ‘Sorry, I got lost’ chestnut looks no longer able to cut the mustard…
Jan 31, 2007
– George W. Bush, President of the United States, CNN Interview 2006
