Google Just Launched Two New Features For Their Online Maps: Terrain Maps and Collaborative Maps.
The terrain maps will certainly be of benefit in showing the lay of the land, but the collaborative maps feature may prove to be an even more useful tool. The ability to create your own custom maps has been available for a while, but collaboration may result in greater benefits. It can create conversation. Invite your readers to share their favorite restaurants, places to hike, etc, and give anyone who stumbles on your map the right to add their favorites. And be sure to get specific with the map, as they do in the example in the Google announcement linked above. Or, you could decide to simply collaborate with others in your office to control the content and show off your local knowledge.
The map below was created to test the collaboration tools. I've shared collaboration rights with two cousins and an uncle, and they can invite others to collaborate as well. The map is embedded here and interactive, so click on the icons and see how it all works.
Grafton, WV: Places To See, Things To Do
I know y'all are going to have a lot of ideas about how to use these new collaborative features. So let the sharing begin.
Tip: If you want to embed a map like this here on AR, you MUST NOT switch back to the WYSIWYG editor, even if you save. AR will remove the iframe tags and the map will not show up. So, add the map code in last and save from the html tab. Also, if you want your map to scroll, like this one does, you will need to change the code to scrolling="yes"
Jeff Turner aka respres
Way Cool!
I see lots of possibilities here. Thanks
Joeann... my pleasure.
Court... do come back and share.
Pat... please do and thank you!
Lisa... the party is always on... month of July. Come on up! Sarah Cooper can help with general directions. :)
I love it! This will be a great addition to the community information I use on my clients sites. For some of my clients I create individual community pages for their market areas and these collaborative maps will provide great visuals for their readers to compliment the information already there.
Thanks Jeff!
Susan... my pleasure.
Sharon... please do share what he comes up with.
Jay... I agree.
David... without question. World domination is the goal.
Jennifer... yes, as a VA it would be easy for you to get it started and let them contribute as they see fit!
James... this was only released by Google yesterday, so there is no data.
Randy.. come show us what you do.
Carol... again, my pleasure.
Jeff,
Once again thanks for the valuable information about Google Maps. I am sure I will use this post as a reference later.
Jeff, how kewl is this? Never enough information for this brain that's for sure. Thanks so much. Added to my bookmarks.
ok.. not sure what the comment above mine is all about!
Anyway, I wanted to see what you are talking about, but the map is not loading. I will try to look it up at Google when I have more time.
Ed I was thinking the same thing, so of coarse I 'googled it' and here's the best link I found (in my 2 minutes of searching).
Jeff Google always coming out with the latest and the greatest... Thanks for sharing