Beginning Google Maps Applications

As of this month (February 2010), GoogleMapsBook.com will be converted into a static HTML archive and be completely decoupled from PHP and Wordpress.

Four years on and the book is still selling really, really well (THANK YOU ALL!), but it’s become obvious that this site and the book are only useful as v2 references. With the release of v3 last March we, as authors, cannot keep up with the rapid pace of change in the Google Maps API.

The book still serves as a useful reference for the deeper topics in mapping, but for a quick start and rapid prototyping, v3 simply can’t be beat.

Therefore, after reading our book (of course), we suggest you visit the Official Geo Developer’s Blog and the Official Google Geo Support discussion group to hone your mapping skills.

As a parting gift to everyone who is just arriving here for the first time, here are the top blog posts (either by importance or number of comments):

• Importing Shapefiles (August 2006)
• Shapefile Tiles with PHP & GD (Sept 2006)
• What are apikey.php and db_credentials.php? (Oct 2006)
• Extending The API To Create Labeled Markers (Jan 2007)
• Clickable LabeledMarker (March 2007)
• to_json and Rails 2 (Feb 2008)

Thanks again everyone. You’ve all helped make this book and our experience supporting and writing it an excellent one.

Take care and happy mapping,
Cam, Jeff, Mike and Andre.