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.

Good information that’s out of date
The book is interesting and has many good ideas and some valuable information. Be aware, however, that the advanced hacks (those dealing with calling the API from your own code) are based on a now obsolete version of the API. So, for example, Hack 62 that tells you how to find that longitude and latitude of an address doesn’t tell you that you can accomplish the task via Google now. Hack 58 (Find the right zoom level) has one (of three) technique that uses an undocumented API that has, apparently, gone away. And, of course, it doesn’t provide the easy way to do it using the current API.

I’m not faulting the authors for not seeing into the future. The book is well written and engaging. Just be aware that parts of it are already out of date.

The best Google Maps book
If you’d like to program or create sites with mapping tools, this book will really help.

Short and direct chapters. Easy to read and learn.

Valuable content from all perspectives
I’ve read both this and the ExtremeTech "Hacking Google Maps," and both have their place, but I found this one to be much more valuable.

It doesn’t contain any introductory information to the API, which some may be looking for, but it’s not something that I would expect to see in a Hacks book anyway. With the v2 release of the API in April 2006, Google’s own documentation has gotten a lot better, and it’s the best place to go for a tutorial.

The book contains a great collection of hacks from all perspectives: users looking to get the most out of Google Maps, power users looking to push the functionality in new ways, and developers using the API. There’s also a good overview of some popular mashups from the mashups’ developers perspectives, and extensions to the API (e.g. TLabel, TPhoto).

Because there are so many contributors, you’ll notice a change in tone and writing style throughout the book; and different coding practices are easy to spot, e.g. one code sample might use a standard, documented JS call, while another uses a homegrown function to accomplish the same thing. Another drawback is that the book is written to v1 of the API, which was replaced months ago, although is backwards compatible. This doesn’t affect readability or value, but several of the undocumented features in the book are in fact documented in v2!

Great book, filled with useful information.

VERY VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!
Google Maps Hacks: Tips & Tools for Geographic Searching and Remixing (Hacks) (Paperback)



Are you a Google application developer? If you are, then this book is for you! Authors Rich Gibson and Schuyler Erle, have done an outstanding job of writing a book that shows you how to take full advantage of the mapping capabilities in Google Local.



Gibson and Erle, begin by showing you how to look up locations, get driving directions, look at satellite pictures, share links to maps in e-mails and on web pages, generate links to maps from a spreadsheet, and use del.icio.us. Then, the authors show you how to put a map on your page, capture user clicks, create a slideshow connected with a map, create custom icons, and measure distances. Next, they cover a variety of mashups, from mapping the news, to seeing where criminals "work," to weather maps, to answering the question: where is the Space Telescope right now. The authors then help you find the cheapest gas near you, load driving directions into your GPS to take with you, look at your GPS track logs, explore hiking trails, figure out why your cell phone doesn’t work at home, and even beat a traffic ticket. They continue by showing you how to geocode your photos on Flickr, set up a blog that knows about place, geocode literature, and examine the choices that go into which satellite images are included. Then, the authors show you how to tweak and extend the Google map. Finally, they show you how to use a clustering algorithm so that your own points fit properly on a map, create your own map tiles, connect to a database, use web standards to display other data on your maps, an even figure out if your kids are likely to barf.



This most excellent book will show you how to make the most of Google Maps. More importantly, you’ll find the tools and inspiration you need right in this book!

VERY VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!
Google Maps Hacks: Tips & Tools for Geographic Searching and Remixing (Hacks) (Paperback)

Are you a Google application developer? If you are, then this book is for you! Authors Rich Gibson and Schuyler Erle, have done an outstanding job of writing a book that shows you how to take full advantage of the mapping capabilities in Google Local.

Gibson and Erle, begin by showing you how to look up locations, get driving directions, look at satellite pictures, share links to maps in e-mails and on web pages, generate links to maps from a spreadsheet, and use del.icio.us. Then, the authors show you how to put a map on your page, capture user clicks, create a slideshow connected with a map, create custom icons, and measure distances. Next, they cover a variety of mashups, from mapping the news, to seeing where criminals "work," to weather maps, to answering the question: where is the Space Telescope right now. The authors then help you find the cheapest gas near you, load driving directions into your GPS to take with you, look at your GPS track logs, explore hiking trails, figure out why your cell phone doesn’t work at home, and even beat a traffic ticket. They continue by showing you how to geocode your photos on Flickr, set up a blog that knows about place, geocode literature, and examine the choices that go into which satellite images are included. Then, the authors show you how to tweak and extend the Google map. Finally, they show you how to use a clustering algorithm so that your own points fit properly on a map, create your own map tiles, connect to a database, use web standards to display other data on your maps, an even figure out if your kids are likely to barf.

This most excellent book will show you how to make the most of Google Maps. More importantly, you’ll find the tools and inspiration you need right in this book!

Where are the basics?
The collection of apps here are fascinating. But I looked for a tutorial telling me "this is how you embed a map, select several points of interest, and label them.". It was not visible.

DIY Cartography
Everyone knows Google Maps. Google has gone out of its way to make Google Maps something that everyone knows about, uses, and talks about. There are blogs that are just about all the mash-ups and hacks people have come up with for Google Maps.

And now, O’Reilly has released Google Maps Hacks, showing how anyone can use the Google Maps API for their own benefit, with a little help.

The book starts off with a basic tutorial on how to add a Google Map to your site - if you’re going to mash up, you have to have something to mash, after all! It also (in Hack 27) shows you how to use Greasemap to add Google Maps functionality to any web site (assuming you’ve already got Greasemonkey and Firefox is your browser). As with all hacks books, Google Maps Hacks includes some basic hacks that just about anyone can do (and points to some great places to see great hacks already done!), and some that are going to require a bit of work and some programming skill.

There were several hacks in the book that I really loved. First, the book pointed me to a site promising to show me where I could find cheap gas. They’ve integrated Google Maps with GasBuddy to create something incredibly useful, though I wish it were updated more often. (My local station hasn’t been updated since September of 2005!)

To use the really good hacks, you’ll need a GPS. Many of the mash-ups are best used when you’re out on the road. (Hack 35 shows how to dump Google Maps data to your GPS system, and #37 shows how to reverse that process and import your GPS Tracklogs to Google Maps.)

The most useful part of the book, though, is when we get to see how various mash-ups work. It’s one thing to see a great use of the Google Maps API, it’s another thing completely to understand how that’s done so that you can do it yourself. And that’s really what’s valuable about the Hacks books - you’re shown how something is done, so you can take that understanding and apply it to what you want to do. That’s what hacking is all about - information and application of that information in new ways.

The power of mashups using Google Maps...
One of the most popular features to come out of Google has been their Google Maps site. In addition to just being able to see places and get directions, there’s a whole application programming interface (API) behind it. Rich Gibson and Schuyler Erle start to show you what that can do in the book Google Maps Hacks: Tips & Tools for Geographic Searching and Remixing.

Contents: You Are Here - Introducing Google Maps; Introducing the Google Maps API; Mashing Up Google Maps; On the Road with Google Maps; Google Maps in Words and Pictures; API Tips and Tricks; Extreme Google Maps Hacks; Index

Gibson and Erle have bundled up 70 hacks that begin to show you the power and "coolness" of Google Maps. The whole "Web 2.0/Mashups" phenomenon has led to tools like Greasemonkey that allow you to mix and match features from various sites to create whole new pages where the sum is greater than the parts. For instance, there are a number of sites that take real-time traffic information, mix it with Google Maps, and give you a whole new way to avoid traffic (Hack #30 - Stay Out of Traffic Jams). Or let’s say that you’re tracking an internet packet to see the route it takes to get to you, and you want to add a visual element to it. Hack #26 - Follow Your Packets Across the Internet takes traceroute information, mixes with it Google Maps, and gives you a visual rendering of how things get from there to you. There’s even a home-brew hack by the author who has spent too many car trips with barfing kids. Hack #70 - Will the Kids Barf? takes the straight-line distance between point A and B, then the distance via roads. If the Detour Index is over 120, experience has taught him that barf bags might be wise... There’s an abundance of code examples in many of the hacks, so it should take little effort for you to personalize many of these hacks to your own use and locale.

Great book, fun read, and a real eye-opener to the power of mashups. Well worth reading...

Fun Google Map mashups
This book is really about using Google Maps in conjunction with other services to create mashup applications. So it not only illustrates applications of the mapping technology, but also gives you great insight into how to stretch Maps for your own stuff.

The hacks books aren’t always about things you can use directly. Often they are like this book where your knowledge of the topic is stretched and inspired.

Great book. Highly recommended.

The Best Mapping Software. Period.
Is there a more important software company in the last decade than Google? When Google makes something, you know it’s going to be good and that is most definitely the case with one of their newest technologies: Google Maps

You might be saying to yourself "another mapping software, why do I need another piece of mapping software?" True enough, there are plenty of other options out there on the web like Mapquest, Yahoo, etc. but I guarantee you that once you try out Google Maps you won’t look back. Google simply has the best, fastest, cleanest and slickest application out there, and it’s fun and enjoyable to use.

If you already use Google Maps and want to get more out of your experience, you won’t be disappointed by ’Google Maps Hacks’. This is a solid guide that discusses the ins and outs of using this great piece of software and taking off to parts unknown. If you want a fun read that will teach you the basics of Google Maps to learning how to put maps in your own web pages to integrating GIS maps with Google Maps to basically whatever you can think of, this is the book for you.

Anything that Google makes I will try, and I only use Google Maps now for all my mapping needs. I think once you give it a try, you will do the same.

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Google Maps Reference
This was a tough buy for me. I wasn’t sure if this book would give me any ideas that I couldn’t just get from the Google Maps API discussion group or the google maps mania blog. Well, there are some ideas that I haven’t seen yet and the hacks "cookbook" design is nice to read. The GPS geocoding information was especially useful with my Garmin. The "Track your every move with Google Earth" is a hack that I’ve always wanted to do but wasn’t completely sure how to do. On the cons side this book could really use color in the examples.

Embed the power of Google maps into your web pages
The Google Maps API lets developers embed Google Maps in their own web pages with JavaScript. You can add overlays to the map (including markers and polylines) and display shadowed "info windows" just like in the maps section of Google. "Google Map Hacks" shows you how to use the power of the Google Maps API to perform useful tasks via your web pages. The book starts out with a simple "Hello World" map application and moves on to show you how to map local weather conditions, find the best prices on a particular product, share pictures with your community, and add interactivity by causing a map to pan or zoom in response to user input. There are a total of 60 hacks that are actually map projects rather than just tips, which is often the case in other O’Reilly Hack books. Because using the Google Map API depends on inserting the correct code into the Javascript of web pages, the reader should already be familiar with HTML and with Javascript in order to get the most from this book. This book would be especially useful for someone planning to use the power of Google maps to accentuate a commercial website.