Finally Google Maps Becomes Useful

June 28th, 2007 · 15 Comments · Google, Google Maps

The day I can spend an hour fighting Google Maps to get a route that covers all lower 48 states is the day I’m finally a Google Maps convert. Typing in city name is for wimps. Dragging that blue line all over the country, now that is GIS baby!

Sure it isn’t efficient, but the Google servers are slow and I gotta get back to work. ~~Now all they need is save to KML.~~

Frank has the info on how to create KML (append &output=kml to the end of the permalink), but my 48 state route doesn’t seem to work.

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15 responses so far ↓

1 Brian Flood // Jun 28, 2007 at 3:02 pm

the servers seem much slower now, mid afternoon they were screaming.

i’m sure they’ll add few thousand more to the cluster and all will be good

still, this is by far the slickest “ajax plus service” implementation I’ve ever seen, consider the bar raised.
2 James Fee // Jun 28, 2007 at 3:04 pm

they have blow away what I thought was possible in the browser. I mean given the limitations on characters you can send, this is impressive.
3 Brian Timoney // Jun 28, 2007 at 3:54 pm

With GMaps having already rolled out a traffic layer, plus its burgeoning presence in the mobile world, many of the dots are in place for a real-time location-aware routing solution.

And once again a thousand business plans need rewriting….

BT
4 University Update - Google - Finally Google Maps Becomes Useful // Jun 28, 2007 at 4:01 pm

[...] Link to Article google Finally Google Maps Becomes Useful » Posted at James Fee GIS Blog — [...]
5 carlos // Jun 28, 2007 at 6:55 pm

There was a post on Lifehacker today about how you can grab the blue line and move it to suit your local knowledge about the route.

it’s a cool feature but it’s not really is relevant to a 48 state road trip eh?
6 James Fee // Jun 28, 2007 at 8:24 pm

well by dragging the blue line, i’m able to create that 48 state road trip.
7 Jeff // Jun 28, 2007 at 11:18 pm

Wow.

This is the coolest webmapping feature ever seen.

Jack, when will we get this in WebADF ?

There are two points missing.

* “Add destination” should not only add destinations at the end of the route but also between two stops (kind of a “via” function).

* Give us that freaking “export route to KML”
8 J Wallis // Jun 29, 2007 at 5:20 am

Interesting, has anyone ever through the lower 48 capitols in ArcRoute to figure out what the shortest path to all of them is? I bet that would crank for a while.
9 James Fee // Jun 29, 2007 at 6:48 am

@Jeff: Can you imagine Network Analyst handing that, especially on the servers we usually use.

This is a google thing and the rest of us need to just appreciate it from afar…
10 KoS // Jun 29, 2007 at 7:07 am

Not too shabby!! Another time killer with some real benefit.

KoS
11 Doug // Jun 29, 2007 at 10:06 am

@james/JWallis

Network analyst solved it in about 30s on my old machine (halfo of which was making the route shape), but it gave a more optimal route for all the points that only took 7.3 days. So extra seconds up front saves you a day of travel time.
12 Carlos Silva // Jun 29, 2007 at 11:01 am

@ James:

ha, sorry ’bout that; Had a brain-fart day and didn’t read your post properly. Thought you had punched in all those locations … ugh, some days it don’t pay to get outta bed.
13 James Fee // Jun 29, 2007 at 11:04 am

I’m a loser, but not that big of a loser!
14 Willie // Jun 29, 2007 at 1:45 pm

http://youtube.com/watch?v=KPOOWvP_dd8
Check out the you tube video on how to use it.
15 Brian Johnson // Jul 2, 2007 at 9:44 am

I am still stuck at IE v6 due to corporate IT, and I have been getting IEXPLORE.EXE crashes when dragging the line sometimes….anyone else experience this?