Google Maps - My Maps

5th May 2007

Google have recently added a cracking new feature to their maps section, called 'My Maps'. This allows you to create and personalise your own maps and make them publicly available. It doesnt sound much, but theres so many uses from providing your mates with directions to plotting out your pub crawl (with photos!).

To start with, head over to google maps and click on the 'My Maps' tab. Make yourself a new map, give it a suitable name and description and take a look at what you can do. You can make a place mark, put it anywhere you fancy and fill in some information about it; this can range from just the name and address to inserting HTML (and therefore pictures). As with all placemarks you can get directions and search nearby.

Another feature you will see in the new option bar is an option to draw lines. So from that placemark you just made you could draw a line to another, making a route / path.

The last option available is the shape button. Strangley enough, this lets you draw shapes on the map. These shapes can take any form you want, from a simple triangle to a multi point indescribable thingy.

So combine these features and you can mark out a race course with start, end and many points in between; then when the race is done you can add images of the race or links to flickr photo pools onto your placemarks. You could even put a link in the 'finish' placemark to a google spreadsheet with the full results in.

What if your planning something a bit more adventurous, like a paintball event, and you want to mark out the teams territories / base, non combat zones and the like. You can simply use the 'shape' tool, give each one title and you've got yourself a course marked out.

You can make your maps publicly available, so if your planning an event you can email all parties involved the link to it.