Slashgeo

The Cartography blog shows EditGrid possibilities (previously on Slashgeo) for online collaborative mapping. See also those examples and discussions from the Digitally Dist. Env. blog and the Digital Geography blog. The simplicity is impressive. From the DG blog: "[...] EditGrid now has an official add-on that supports the creation of KML for spreadsheet data. This means that spreadsheet data can be displayed on a Google Map or Google Earth. [...] EditGrid is very student-friendly and intuitive to work with, as the following demonstration shows."

Google announced their new Google Maps feature called My Maps, allowing anyone to easily produced their own customized maps. From the official blog: "You can add placemarks, draw lines and shapes, and embed text, photos and videos -- all using a simple drag and drop interface. Your map automatically gets a public URL that you can share with your friends and family, or you can also publish your map for inclusion in Google Maps search results." Also worth reading is the Google Earth Blog's long analysis, Ogle Earth's comparison of this new feature and Microsoft's Live Local and All Points Blog discussion on their business case and FreeGeoTools' entry on the accuracy of points. I guess this is a serious blow to OpenLayers mass adoption and mashup startups.

tprinty writes "Looks like Google is getting their street view fleet in order big time. A tipster to Gizmodo took some screenshots of a dozen Chevy Cobalts ready to hit the streets. Smile! Your on Google Maps!" From the Gizmodo article (with screenshot): "It was an entire fleet of at least 30 brand-new Chevy Cobalt cars parked behind the building, most without license plates yet. As you can see in the pictures above, each had a metal device attached to its top, which looks suspiciously like a vertical extension for mounting Google's Streetview 360° camera."

AnyGeo reports "Another cool tidbit today out of the Google camp is embeddable maps in your blog.. think embed a youtube video into your blog and you'll know what I mean. Google has made it way simple to now embed your custom google maps (MyMaps) into your website. Simply open a map, click the "link to this page" link (upper right), copy the code, then embed into your map! Screenshot of this is below and the actual embedded map is provided at the bottom.. way cool.. thanks Google Maps team!". Update: 08/22 20:24 GMT by S : Here's the official Google blog entry about this new useful feature.

Another official Google announcement today, this time on the addition of community maps, such as shared MyMaps and KML, to search results of Google Maps. From the blog: "Over the last year, we've been working hard to organize this local wisdom; we've sifted through millions of My Maps, KML files and other information created by all of you in the geoweb. Starting today, community maps will be available in search results on Google Maps. Now you can find cool places to visit, go for a hike, walk your dog, or take a date using the help of other Google users."

Ogle Earth informs us Apple Leopard's Dashcode supports KML and GeoRSS directly: "MacOS X 10.5 Leopard comes with DashCode, a tool for developing widgets to populate the Mac's dashboard... One of the pre-made templates is for a Google Map, and all you have to do — literally — is add a GeoRSS or KML URL, get a Google Maps API key, and publish." See also related stories below. Update: 11/21 17:12 GMT by S : Due to a surprisingly high popularity of this story, I moved it from section to main page.

Google Lat Lon Blog announces the addition of terrain to their free Google Maps site. In addition to adding the Terrain button, they've removed the Hybrid button. They explain,

"You may notice in this screenshot that the handy "Hybrid" button, which shows satellite images overlaid with labels and roads, seems to have gone missing. Don't worry -- this view can now be accessed by clicking the "Satellite" button and checking the "Show labels" check box that will appear under the "Satellite" button."

mickmel writes "A few days ago, Google Earth Hacks launched YourMap, a simple tool to help novices embed a Google Map on their own site. It it intended to help small business and churches, or anyone that wants an embedded map on their site but doesn't have the time/skills to make it happen. The script helps avoid the need for individual users to register for a Google Maps API key by loading each map via an iframe on the Google Earth Hacks server. The end result is a two-minute, two-step process to embed a customizable Google Map on their site. In just a few days, over 700 maps have already been created, with better than 60 known sites already running the script live (examples: 1 2 3 4 5)."