Beginning Google Maps Applications

Amy writes “We just posted an article Top 50 Things You Didn’t Know You Could Do With Google Maps. I thought I’d bring it to your attention just in case you think your readers would find it interesting.”

Indeed. Some of this will be well known to our readers, however our newer mashup friends might find something here that is interesting. Enjoy.

In the last few weeks we’ve seen an explosion of people complaining about the lack of asinh() on the Windows version of PHP. We use the asinh() function extensively in Chapter 7 for the custom tile overlays. Admittedly, we didn’t test any of the code against windows versions of PHP (we’re LAMP folks), so until the middle of September when Stuart contacted us to ask a question we had no idea about the problem. Continue reading ‘PHP and asinh() on Windows’

DragZoom (previously called GZoom) is my drag-to-zoom custom Google Map control I open-sourced last year. I’m happy to say the code has been incorporated into Google’s own GMaps Utility Library. Thanks to Pamela Fox from Google for doing a lot of work to bring it in. You can now source DragZoom directly off of Google’s servers, so there’s no need to download your own copy.

Pamela also put together a great example page demonstrating the different instantiation options. Other links for the project:

• Packed source code (can source directly from this URL)
• Unpacked source code (use for reference)
• DragZoom project Root
• Documentation: examples and reference

Hello All,

We’ve talked and talked about adding forums to this site and decided against it. We already do all of the support we can by email and encourage anyone who has trouble with anything in the books to contact us that way. If the problem is common enough we’ll blog about it instead. We also think that for all it’s UI short comings, the official API group is still the number 1 source for great support in this community. We just don’t want to fracture that.

However, if one of you is enterprising enough to start up a successful forum we’ll endorse it here to all of our readers and RSS subscribers. How’s that for a compromise?

Take care and good luck with all your maps!

Our three week entry period is over and we have selected the winners of a free copy of Beginning Google Maps Applications with Rails and Ajax: From Novice to Professional.

From the over 450+ entries received we have randomly selected four lucky winners. They are:

1. Ryan Irelan of Raleigh, NC, USA
2. Daniel Leong of London, UK
3. Mike Hodgson (location withheld)
4. Aran Donohue (location withheld)

We have contacted each of the winners via email to arrange delivery of their prize. Congratulations!