Simon Willison’s Weblog

Encoded Polyline Algorithm Format. Google Maps does some pretty crazy bit mangling to create compressed versions of lat/long pairs.

# 4th January 2008, 4:12 pm / google-maps, latlong, polyline, encoding

ExtInfoWindow 1.0: Ajax powered, CSS customization. Finally, a semi-official way of creating customised info windows for the Google Maps API. You lose the default shadow but gain the ability to style the entire info window using CSS.

# 15th December 2007, 12:22 pm / css, google-maps, google-maps-api, extinfowindow, javascript, ajax, google

Unobtrusively Mapping Microformats with jQuery. My contribution to 24 ways: using Mapstraction to geocode hCards (extracted with jQuery) and plot them on a Google Map.

# 12th December 2007, 12:28 am / 24-ways, mapstraction, microformats, hcard, jquery, javascript, google-maps, geocoding

Shadowmaker. Upload a PNG with a transparent background and get back a shadow image suitable for use with the Google Maps API.

# 10th December 2007, 3:45 pm / shadowmaker, png, google-maps-api, google-maps

OpenStreetMap on the iPhone! Via an ingenious hack. The Google Maps iPhone client caches downloaded tiles using SQLite—to display your own custom tiles, you just need to dump them straight in to the “cache”.

# 22nd October 2007, 3:30 pm / sqlite, google-maps, iphone, openstreetmap, mikel-maron

Get Lat Lon. I finally got fed up of hunting around for simple latitude/longitude tools when messing around with mapping APIs, so I built my own with a memorable URL. I plan to add new features as and when I need them.

# 12th October 2007, 2:14 pm / longitude, getlatlon, latlon, latitude, google-maps, maps, negeography, projects

Google Maps, HTML version. Google’s mostly undocumented accessible version of Google Maps. Robin Christopherson demonstrated this yesterday at FOWA.

# 4th October 2007, 9:31 am / fowa, fowa2007, robin-christopherson, google-maps, google, accessibility

Brighton geek venues. Nat’s latest project: a neat Google Maps mashup listing venues for geek events in Brighton, managed using Google MyMaps to edit a KML file.

# 16th August 2007, 1:38 am / natalie-downe, google-maps, mymaps, googlemymaps, google, kml, mashup, brighton, geek

Microformats in Google Maps (via) No doubt thanks to the influence of Kevin Marks.

# 31st July 2007, 11:36 pm / microformats, google-maps, jeremy-keith, kevinmarks, google

Cross Domain Frame Communication with Fragment Identifiers. Google are using this crazy iframe/fragment trick for their new Mapplets API.

# 31st May 2007, 2:15 pm / google-maps, google, hack, javascript, iframes

The Google Maps Street View team? They’re posing outside the Googleplex so I’m guessing this is the team that built it.

# 30th May 2007, 12:29 pm / streetview, google, google-maps, easteregg, googleplex

Howto: Google Maps Street View outside US. Add “&gl=us” at the end of the URL to avoid the evil geo IP restriction and play with Google’s latest toy.

# 30th May 2007, 7:40 am / google-maps, google, streetview, geoip

The Oxford Guide free WiFi plotted on Google Maps. The guide offers a geocoded Atom feed which can be directly plotted on a Google Map.

# 26th May 2007, 9:55 am / google, google-maps, theoxfordguide, oxford, wifi

Introduction and Yahoo! Pipes. The official Google Maps API blog describes how to plot KML output from Yahoo! Pipes.

# 3rd May 2007, 10 pm / yahoo, google, google-maps, yahoopipes, xml, maps

Google My Maps: Bodeans. I’ve been talking about how useful a simple tool for creating custom maps would be for ages... looks like Google beat me to it. Here’s one I created showing the location of Bodeans, an excellent Kansas-style BBQ joint in Soho, London. It’s a shame the URLs suck.

# 5th April 2007, 5:40 pm / mymaps, maps, london, google-maps, bodeans, bbq, soho, google

Ekranoplan! Crazy awesome Soviet “ground effect” vehicle, visible in dry dock on Google Maps.

# 3rd April 2007, 10:04 am / google-maps, bill-humphries, soviet, ekranoplans

New Open Source Utility Library for the Google Maps API (via) Google are taking a hybrid approach to development on their Maps API—an open source utility library layered on top of their closed source, obfuscated core code.

# 23rd March 2007, 9:09 pm / google, google-maps, open-source

My photos tagged “cheese” on a Google Map. You can paste a Flickr GeoRSS feed directly in to the Google Maps query box.

# 23rd March 2007, 1:55 am / georss, flickr, google-maps, cheese, google

KML and GeoRSS support added to the Google Maps API. Since Flickr can output GeoRSS, this means you can now plot your Flickr photos on a Google Map (if you’re so inclined).

# 23rd March 2007, 1:03 am / flickr, georss, kml, google, google-maps

LiveBus.org (via) Brilliant Google Maps mashup in a similar vein to Chicago Crime—displays screen-scraped bus timetable information for Oxfordshire and Surrey in a far more useful format.

# 10th February 2007, 10:56 pm / livebus, james-wheare, google-maps, chicagocrime, maps, mashup, oxford

A GIS newsletter describes the server-side tech behind Google Maps (via) Apparently it’s using Telcontar’s Drill Down Server, with extensive customisations.

# 23rd February 2005, 4:11 pm / gis, google-maps

Maps released. Google Maps Safari support is being worked on.

# 8th February 2005, 12:03 pm / google, google-maps, safari, chris-wetherell