boogdesign posts

The talk started with a history/overview of Google Maps API - this was quite useful to me, because I wasn't that familiar with API to start with, but I imagine there were plenty of folk in the audience for whom this was stuff they already knew. It also made it more difficult to me to spot the actual new bits, but this is what I spotted:

• API for directions - a simple javascript function, called with a div to return the results into, and the option to add a traffic overlay
• Adsense for Maps - to allow developers 'to monetize their applications', not yet released but 'coming soon'
• Mapplets - as mentioned in my first post, except this time there were several different examples and some code to look at

Andrew then went on to talk about KML and GeoRSS, specifically taking your geographic data out of your javascript, where it is locked away and hidden from the world, and putting it in KML and GeoRSS files which can be indexed by Google. The talk concluded with some more demos of Mapplets and using the API, using the preview version of Google Maps, followed by a question and answer session. There were some useful answers, my favourite tip - type the url of your KML file into the search box on Google Maps to have your content rendered on it.

Overall a very interesting session, especially considering my relative lack of knowledge, the large number of simple examples with sample code helped me follow along very well, so 5 out of 5.