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Google Launches Mapping Service
Alex Reynolds writes "The beta version of Google Maps is now online, offering an alternative to Mapquest with what some might describe as a very much improved user interface, offering a cleaner layout, drop shadows, clickable waypoints and keyboard controls that allow you to move and zoom the map. For IE and Firefox/Mozilla at this point (no Safari or Opera support, as yet)."
GoogleMaps + AdSense + Google Local = Massive profits for Google and a fantastic customer experience.
I knew the folks at Google were smart, but...
I'm a big tall mofo.
As said before, yes, it only seems to work in IE/Firefox (which is a shame). But, it is still easily the best map experience I have ever had. Being able to just type parts of an address into a bar instead of seperate boxes is disorganized, but quick and easy. And the balloon popup for current location is useful. The vector graphics are great, and scale to monitor resolution. I just wish NAVTEQ would add topographic information (for that matter, why does NAVTEQ do everyone's maps?). The zoom scale is much better than others, since it is live and smooth scaling. However, overall, the system doesn't seem like it would transfer to print well. I suppose the only way to find out is to try it.
WASTE - The Secure P2P
Very nice interface, and certainly less cluttered than maps.yahoo.com or mapquest.
But best of all -- my new subdivision is on the map whereas it's absent on all the other free map services that the pizza guy, furniture stores, and other delivery folks keep trying to use because they've never heard of my street before.
Google's "DO NO EVIL" company value really shows in this excellent service.
The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us. -- Calvin & Hobbes
This looks very much like maps24.com... their application was java-based, and this appears to be browser-based / scripted.
Maps24.com won a Webby in 2004.
The click and drag for map movement rocks.
I never use Mapquest. I use maps.yahoo.com, and when I login with my yahoo id (started using it for mail, now I just use it for everything but mail because gmail rocks), I am able to name and save specific locations. So now I have all of my son's soccer and basketball game locations available for instant lookup.
When Google Maps gets this feature and allows me to save locations linked to my gmail account, I'll switch over. The new interface in Google Maps is cool, but Yahoo maps (and Mapquest, I suspect) is good enough - especially for simply printout out map and driving directions.
1) They won't take you the wrong way down one-way streets.
2) They will get you to your destination instead of 95% of the way there.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Um, ok.... those two services you linked to? They suck compared to this. They're a big reload fest, just like all other traditional web apps. Click, wait for a new picture to load, repeat endlessly. It's not interactive, it's just a normal web page with links that do interesting things.
Google's service does live zooms, live scrolling, and never leaves me waiting. If it requires breaking standards to accomplish that, then so be it. Nobody's forcing you to use it.
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
And there's a little bug - if you search for a city, its name appears on the right. Now, zoom out, and zoom in on another city. The city name doesn't change.
I'm looking at Montreal (street level), and i says I'm still looking at Ottawa.
This will be GREAT for practical jokes - "Need directions? Here's the map of downtown New York (hands over map of Detroit that says "New York" on it).
Now what about those of us who have to hold a map upside-down over our head to make sense of the orientation? Frigging monitors are HEAVY.
Yeah, it is a very cool interface. Also, it loads incredibly fast, and I think it's probably by far the clearest map rendering I've seen anywhere. Extremely good visual quality.
For other choices, I still love Map24. They've got Europe and North America, and the whole thing in a neat Java applet that is also very usable. But Google's map is gonna be tough competition for them...
Also, you gotta love the typically Google way of doing your address or directions queries... just say "Kansas City to Los Angeles" etc. and it works.
But of course it's still Beta. A simple test for "Wilmington, DE to Jersey City, NJ" in my case renders a misplaced blue line that I can't quite make sense of. But if that's the only problem...
I think it'll be more impressive than that. If you've tried the Keyhole satellite software (parent company bought by Google), it becomes obvious that the eventual product will incorporate actual satellite imagery down to the block level.
If you haven't tried(played)with the keyhole software, I highly recommend the free trial. Same address location, zoom in and scroll capabilities as Google maps plus angle effects, but with real satellite photos.
http://www.keyhole.com/
The image is made out of an array of tiles, each a GIF about 3.6K in size. They have URLs like this: http://mt.google.com/mt?v=.3&x=5&y=-4&zoom=8 As you pan to the right, each tile's src attribute gets the url of the tile to its right, which is of course already in browser cache. The rightmost column of five tiles is then fetched from the server. The very clever thing is how they make panning continuous. I have to look at their javascript to see how they accomplish it, it's quite an illusion. In any case, the efficiency of this approach accounts for the generous size of the map. and its responsiveness, which would be hard to achieve using conventional mapserver techniques.
I've worked with developing web map services before. This approach complicates some things you might want to do, but is probably how you'd do it if you wanted a very fast, ultra-scalable service I wouldn't be surprised if Google, which in many ways is in the information storage business, has got all these tiles pre-rendered somewhere. Normally, you'd render the gif for the entire map in a temporary directory somewhere. Natrually this approach is more processor and bandwidth sensitive, but saves on storage. Of course, it allows you to do other kinds of GISy things that probably would be hard to do with Google's approach, but those kinds of things are relatively rare in this kind of application.
I'd like to figure out how to map from geographic coordinate systems to the bizarre system they're using. Then I could use the mapping service for my own uses.
Altogether, it's an interesting first effort. A rectangle drag zoom function would be welcome.
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