Simon Willison’s Weblog

Google Maps Data API (via) I’m disappointed by this one—it’s really just a CRUD store for the KML files used in Google MyMaps. It would be a lot more useful if it let you perform geospatial calculations against your stored map data using some kind of query API—a cloud service alternative to tools like PostGIS.

# 20th May 2009, 9:07 pm / apis, gdata, gis, google-maps, google-maps-api, googlemapsdataapi, kml, postgis

Map Maker for Developers. Tiles from Google’s Map Maker crowdsourcing effort are now available in the JS and static maps APIs on an opt-in basis. Maybe I’m misunderstanding something here, but Google Map Maker seems like a big step backwards for open geographic data. People donate their mapping efforts to Google, who keep them—unlike OpenStreetMap, where the donated efforts are made available under a Creative Commons license.

# 21st February 2009, 9:05 am / creativecommons, crowdsourcing, google, googlemapmaker, google-maps-api, openstreetmap, staticmaps

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 / ajax, css, extinfowindow, google, google-maps, google-maps-api, javascript

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 / google-maps, google-maps-api, png, shadowmaker