Google finally puts Australia on the map

location based services

Advertisement
AdvertisementBy Louisa Hearn
May 19, 2006

Google overnight sneaked out much anticipated street mapping data for Australia and New Zealand cities within Google Maps in a move that is likely to spur a frenzy of mapping mash-up activity.

While the Google Earth application has captured the imagination of the world with its 3D satellite images, Google Maps offers businesses a means of overlaying their own data or statistics over detailed street maps on their web site.

An obvious application is in real estate where available properties can be plotted onto a map for the benefit of house hunters.

A "mash-up" typically mixes different types of data such as geographic data overlayed on an interactive map. In countries where Google street map data is available, more mash-ups have sprung up each day and range from the quirky to the very practical.

'Dig to the Centre of Earth' will tell you where you would end up if you dug right through to the other side of the planet and the Da Vinci Tour tracks all the landmarks from the Dan Brown novel.

On the less frivolous side is the Dublin Commuter Map which provides links into realtime GPS data linked to trains to give accurate timetable information.

Until now, Australians have only had access to satellite data and maps on Google Maps which excluded place names, roads and streets.

While the addition of city street names does not yet add up to a full local Google Maps service, the company said it served as an initial step in bringing Australian data to Google Maps.

"With this enhancement, developers in Australia can also begin using the Google Maps API to integrate the product with their website," Google said.

Mike Pegg, who maintains the Google Maps Mania blog said he expected a lot of mash-up activity in Australia given the enthusiastic uptake so far.

He said some existing Australian Google Maps mash-ups had already laid their data over basic satellite imagery while others had begun to turn to alternative mapping sources to substitute the lack of street maps from Google.

"Of all countries in the world that didn't yet have street maps there were already a lot of mash-ups being created in Australia, so I am anticipating really great mash-ups from there and I think it will transform a lot of industries," he said.

Local developers who have been holding out for the more detailed Google city street map data will now be able to start mashing up creations using the Google Maps API - a free toolkit for building an overlay map for location-based data sources.

For those without developer skills to work with the APIs, online tools such as www.communitywalk.com and www.wayfaring.com offer an alternative method of overlaying data onto the maps.

Google first launched Google Maps early last year, which included street maps in USA and Canada. Soon after it introduced street maps for Ireland and Japan and more recently expanded it across Europe.

>>MashUp