Having Fun with Google Maps
So Google finally released their Google Maps API. Look for all kinds of cool apps in the near future based on this API. Of course, I couldn't resist the urge to write my own, so I came up with what I think is a neat little project, combining several things that I really enjoy doing.
Okay, non-techies can skip this paragraph since it's a bit heavy on the geek factor. I start out by taking photos with my digital camera, and also make sure to bring along my GPS receiver when I do, marking waypoints as I take photos. Later, when I get home, I extract the timestamp from the EXIF header of a JPG file I want to upload, geocode it, and stuff it in a database, along with a short description. From there, the Google Maps API takes over. I feed it the latitude/longitude coordinates, html description for the overlay window and center on the last location from which I've uploaded data.
Pretty fun stuff. You can check it out here.