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June 16, 2005
Google Maps modifies API: map sites drop like flies
Yesterday, the Google Maps team made changes to the API, upgrading to version 7, and sites like mygmaps.com, housingmaps.com, National Weathter Service Storm Tracker, along with many others who host their own maps based on the mygmaps script went down until directing scripts to the old APIs. In my case, it was maps.keyhole.6.js.
What was interesting was the speed with which folks helped others get their code bugs ironed out, and the cooperation that took place in the Google Map hacks community present on the Google-Maps Google group. The folks there getting people on board with working with the javascript, understanding the API and the different changes in each version, as well as regular XML 101 being taught is pretty impressive.
A lot of grass roots and communtiy mapping is getting it's legs with Google Map hacks through the rendering of demographic data like crime stats, sex offender data, land use and now even transit data.
I imagine an interesting byproduct of this Google Maps mania must be that a lot of folks are examining local maps closely, and submitting corrections to Navteq to correct vector data at a prolific rate.
Pretty ingenius way to get users to improve the qualtiy of their data set. I just hope the Google Maps API remains open to being hacked. It would be a shame if once they improved their vector data sets, they shut the door on free API access.
Posted by cystdog at June 16, 2005 08:31 AM
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