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- Neo Geo BlogMay 28
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Posted by Michael Weiss-Malik, KML Product Manager
I have good news and bad news. Let's start with the bad.
The bad: After 2 years, 6 months, and 14 days of dedicated developer community service, the Official Google Maps API Blog is being retired. That's right... the blog you're reading right now, right here, is no more, starting today. No more news will be posted here.
The good: All is not lost! A new blog is taking this blog's place: The Google Geo Developers Blog. Hop on over there to see the first post and get the full story on the change.
So if you're reading this post in an RSS reader, be sure to subscribe to the new blog's feed. And if you're reading this post right on blogger itself, be sure to update your bookmark. Because there will still be plenty of continued Maps API news... you just won't be able to catch it here.
See you all over at the new blog!
- App Engine, Local Search, & Maps: Making Static Maps... Interactive?May 28
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Posted by Ben Lisbakken, AJAX APIs Team
JavaScript and Flash are great for putting Google Maps on your website, but sometimes they just won't do. For mobile browsers or users with dial-up connections, simpler is better. So I wrote an open source non-JavaScript version of Google Maps which is designed to show how easy it is to write an application on App Engine that makes use of two new APIs from Google: The Static Maps API and the Local Search API's REST interface. It doesn't have advanced features like street view and public transportation, but it gives you a searchable map that you can zoom in/out on as well as save locations. It also automatically saves your last map view so that every time you go back to the site it will show you what you were last looking at. Check out the source code.
It uses App Engine to store saved points, the AJAX LocalSearch REST API for search functionality, and the Static Maps API to display maps. App Engine is easy to learn and the data store is useful for this kind of application. The REST API for LocalSearch is also very simple. For more information on it, go
- geo search 2.0: Data In, Data OutMay 22
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Posted by Pamela Fox, Maps API Team
Last week during the geo madness of Where2.0 and WhereCamp, we announced two enhancements in geo search to make it both easier for developers to get their data into our geo search index and easier for developers to get data back out of the index:
- Geo Sitemaps: Sitemaps are a protocol that bots use to index content from websites. Last year, we announced the ability to include KML/GeoRSS files in regular sitemaps just like a normal web resource. This year, we announce a special extension for sitemaps that adds geo-specific tags and makes it easier for us to index. To get your geo content indexed as fast as possible, just submit the sitemap to Google Webmaster Central. For more information on creating a KML file to include in a sitemap, read this article in the KML documentation. An example geo sitemap listing a KML and a GeoRSS file is shown below:
- libkml Marches On!May 19
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Posted by Mano Marks, Geo APIs Team
Google has released version 0.2 of libkml, an open source library for serializing and deserializing KML files. libkml now uses a memory management scheme based on "smart pointers", and has deprecated the use of SCons. On Linux and Mac OS X it now use the traditional automake, and on Windows Microsoft Visual Studio. The "smart pointer" scheme presently restricts support for some alternate language bindings, so libkml 0.2 can only be called from C++, Java, and Python. Version 0.1 also supported PHP, Perl, and Ruby, and is still available in the subversion repository if you're interested. We plan on restoring the those bindings as soon as we can.
Check out the User Guide, and particularly the future development list.
Here's an example of what the code looks like: // createkml.cc // This program uses the KmlFactory to create a Point Placemark and // prints the resultant KML on standard output. #include #include #include "kml/dom.h" // libkml types are in the kmldom namespace using kmldom::CoordinatesPtr; using kmldom::KmlPtr; using kmldom::KmlFactory; using kmldom::PlacemarkPtr; using kmldom::PointPtr; int main() { // Get the factory singleton to create KML elements. KmlFactory* factory = KmlFactory::GetFactory(); - Love My Maps? Use its Line and Shape Editing in your API Apps!May 16
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Posted by Keith Golden, My Maps team
When we launched the map editing tools in Google Maps, the reaction of developers was "This is cool, but how can I use it on my own site?" As someone who was originally drawn to Google in part because of the Maps API and the great developer community around it, I committed to making the My Maps tools useful for developers on their own sites.
Today, I'm pleased to announce that our user interface functionality for editable polylines and polygons is now part of the Maps API.
Say, for example, that you have a GPolygon you want users to be able to edit. Simply call GPolygon.enableEditing() and the poly will have draggable edit control vertices when the user mouses over it. To later make it non-editable, call GPolygon.disableEditing().
We've also exposed additional events for GPolygon and GPolyline so that you can easily mimic the MyMaps behavior (in mashups or Mapplets) by calling enableEditing on "mouseover" and disableEditing on "mouseout". To find out when the user makes an edit, listen for