Google Developer Day 2007 – New Features in the Google Maps API

  • MarkerManager manages which makers to add depending on how large the viewport is. All markers are in memory, but that’s fine since markers are really small. Makes sure you don’t have 20,000 markers on a map of the whole US.
  • You can use map.addOverlay with GGeoXML, which uses KML, to overlay geo data onto maps (and Google Earth). They also support GeoRSS. He’s showing 6 lines of code overlaying interesting airplanes throughout the US.
  • They’re showing off Tile Layer Overlay, which allows you to overlay tiles on maps. Tiles are based on X, Y and Z (Z = Zoom). The example is of Stanford’s college campus map overlayed on top of the standard Google Map. Hot. You can set transparency on tiles too.
  • They use the Mercator Projection (must investigate this).
  • No way to easily say “I don’t have data outside of this boundary box”.
  • Driving directions just launched in the Google Maps API. Four lines of code to create a map with drections. Insanity. Also, allows you to load “Way Points” (ie. directions from Foo to Bar and then Bar to Baz) along with locales.
  • 10,000 requests per key per day.
  • They’re now embedding sponsored links directly into the maps. You’ll be able to enable Google Adsense on your maps. This is an opt-in feature. This would indicate that advertisers can now geo tag their advertisements. Advertisers can be blacklisted, ads are shown based on viewport and HTML content around the map.
  • Plans are in motion to base traditional AdSense ads shown outside of the map on the actual map dat.
  • All of the AdSense stuff above should launch sometime in June.

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