Saturday 16 June 2007

Enterprise 2.0 and Google Maps

Well, I have been working all this week on a small Enterprise 2.0 application and have got a fair hang of how the Google Maps API works. I must say, it is really cool and it is easy as pie to hook into the maps and place your own stuff on different locations.
We saw two different ways of retrieving the Geo Coordinates of a particular location (one with Javascript and the other with Java). Both are easy.

All in all, building applications on top of Google Maps is a definite Yes.

I also saw some of the Google Developer Day videos and came across this interesting one on a Google Map API workshop.
The speaker gave a brief overview of the Maps API and set the guys on developing an application (within 90 mins). The best 3 attempts would win a 3D mouse. Do you know what a 3D mouse is? Well, i didn’t. Its a klunky joystick looking app that allows you to pan and zoom on Google Earth and Google Maps in a much better way than its conventional cousin.
Towards the end, the speaker gave a useful tip on the GeoCoding service saying that the same should not be used on the fly and the GeoCoodinates should be stored in the local database for faster response time. Not to mention the limitation of 50,000 requests that the GeoCoder allows over a 24 hour? (some controversy here)

Another interesting API that was talked about was the use of Mapplets.which allow you to embed data from a variety of sources, into your Google Map.
Give the video a look if you have a spare 30 minutes.

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