Tom Mangan has put the Google Maps API to interesting use with his space shuttle tracking page. Also worth checking out: his Blackbird Spotting site and TLable, a little extension to make pinning/annotating maps even better.

blackbird, google maps, map api, space, space shuttle, spacecraft, sr-71, tom mangan

We don’t need to hack Google Maps anymore. Now that Google has released a public maps API, we can make more reliable map-dependent apps (which will now have better browser compatibility, thank you). Within a few minutes of signing up for a maps API key I had put together the following of the Nevada Test Site Tour.

Yeah, click the satellite button, scroll, zoom… It’s real.

The API is all JavaScript, but I use a bit of PHP to iterate through an array of points and generate the code that puts the lines and pins on the map.

The most frustrating development with the Google Maps API is that each developer key is limited to a certain hostname and directory. It’s sensitive to things like “www.maisonbisson.com” instead of “maisonbisson.com” or “maisonbisson.com/blog/post/10594” instead of “maisonbisson.com/blog/” . That’s why this is loading in an iframe.

Thanks to The Unofficial Google Weblog for the tip that the API was released yesterday. As a minor coincidence, Yahoo! also released their maps API this week. Damn.

tags: api, google maps, google maps api, map api, mapping, maps api, nevada test site, yahoo, yahoo maps, yahoo!, yahoo! maps