the one thing that google maps could do to send it over the top is to give directions using local public transit. i’m sure that would be insanely difficult to do, but what a killer feature. perhaps now a killer mapplet?

Hopefully, Mapplets will give developers a new way to show off their maps mashups, and will give users a new way to compare information. I showed off a demo of mashing up a lot of Vegas information to find a perfectly located hotel which people seemed to enjoy…

With mapplets, Google Maps can start to be considered a serious mapping platform. Not on par with pro level systems such as those from ESRI, mind you, but getting there.

My only complaint is the “Map data by Tele Atlas” slug doesn’t write itself inside the boundaries of the map, it pops out a little past it on the left side.

Tim raises some excellent points. It is much too hard to install our mapplet. We can provide a short link to the install page as Mike did in the post, but once you click “Add it to Maps” what do you do? You have to figure out that you want the “Back to Google Maps” link (even though you didn’t come from there), and once you’re there you need to turn on the “Discover things to do – Zvents” checkbox.

It would help to have a fast track through all of this – just show me the map! Also Google could do something like Netvibes where they start you out with everything stored in a cookie so you don’t have to have an account at all.

BTW, for my fellow mapplet developers, I wrote a little piece of code called GAsync() that can speed up and simplify your mapplet – and let you write the same code for both the Mapplet API and the Maps API. Google will be including this in a future release of the Mapplet API, but there’s no need to wait – you can use the code right now by copying my function into your code.

Here are all the details, along with a test mapplet and a Maps API test page which uses the same code.

I hope that proves useful for someone!

Google mapplets = Incredible potential, not yet user friendly.

Hopefully this can cross the chasm and achieve the potential that exists…

- You will need to have a Google account.
- You will need to be logged in. If you’re not logged in, maps works just fine but you won’t be given the opportunity to add stuff. So people will never realize what they’re missing.
- If you are logged in, maps works just fine, so one has to be really boring and curious at the same time to go figure out what that ‘add content’-link or -button might be.
- Then you’ll have to have the patience to weed through the enormous directory of mapplets that are available, and find some stuff that’s actually answering one’s needs. People are not going to do this, they just want quick and easy added value.

Why has the internet become a success amongst the general public? Due to the invention of the WWW, useful stuff could actually be presented at a single location, without a need for any tweaking, setup or otherwise hard work before it started to be really useful. This enabled services to go viral — people could tell each other: just go to hotmail.com and you can write me e-mail messages, just go to google.com if you want to find stuff, just go to flickr.com if you wanna put photos online. I.e. useful functionality got easy enough to find and use to go viral. Now try to explain to your aunt how she can lookup events on Google maps using the Zvents mapplet. Even íf she manages to understand you, she won’t be able to spread the message to her bridge pals for sure.

Today Google brings together Mapplets and “My Maps” within “Google Maps”.

BeyondWWW