Google Maps Rocks

[+bicknell]

I've always liked Google, and Google maps is no exception. Maps and satellite / aerial photos you can just throw around, quite handy. Haven't used it much for benchmarking.

 

I tried an experiement today. I cut and pasted in the coordiantes from a gc.com page and boom, it just worked. Copied in NGS ones, just worked. It seems to understand the different formats and just "does the right thing". Should have guessed, after all these are the people who just recognize fedex numbers and USPS numbers and the like.

 

So, need a quick photo of an area, just put the coordinates into maps.google.com.

[+Nazgul]

Boulter has set up another nice tool on his website for cachers that taps into the new Google maps. Check out http://boulter.com/gps/maps/.

 

There's a forum thread with descriptions of some of the things you can do with it over at the GBA website.

[+bicknell]

My method of doing this right now is very crude, however, check out:

 

Benchmarks in Clark County Virginia

 

In particular, click on a few of them. I think you'll like it.

 

I also found this nugget Topo Maps and Aerial Photos in Google Maps.

 

It's a little hard to get from A to B right now, but it would be quite possible to have a map that showed all the benchmarks in an area google maps style, color coded for if they had been found or not, with pictures in the pop ups where they have been found, links to the NGS pages and the like, and overlay that on maps, topo maps, satellite images, photographic images, etc, all with a few clicks.

 

Indeed, overall it's easier than I thought. I dunno about the rest of you, but getting something like this added to gc.com seems like a huge help...and similar functionality can be used on the geocaching side as well.

[+cpnkr]

I've come up with a method to display Geocaches with Google Maps using an AJAX model...check out how:

 

http://www.cplee.org/archives/000092.html

 

Casey

[+bicknell]

Nice work. I've got a couple of ideas now that they have a good clean API. I wish geocaching.com had an API for pulling data as well, as doing web queries and parsing them is not all that efficient.