|
 |
|
 |
 |
Hacking GoogleMaps and GoogleEarth (ExtremeTech)
|
by Martin C. Brown
Sales Rank: 151625
|
Discount: 34 %
List Price: $29.99
$19.79
At Amazon
|
|
Paperback: 408 pages
Publisher: Wiley July 24, 2006
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0471790095
ISBN-13: 978-0471790099
Product Dimensions:
9.1 x 7.2 x 1 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
Book Description
This one-of-a-kind resource contains 500 pages of jaw-dropping hacks, mods, and customizations. These include creating mashups with data from other sources such as Flickr, building a space station tracker, hacking Maps with Firefox PiggyBank, and building a complete community site with Maps and Earth. Now you can map out locations, get driving directions, zoom into any point on the globe, display real time traffic, and much more.
Back Cover Copy
Going somewhere? Or just getting back?
Great vacation photos—too bad you can't remember where you took them. And wouldn't it have been terrific to find a pizza joint when you bumped into your college buddy in that little ski town? Well, by making Google Maps and Google Earth do your bidding, you can find out not only where you're going, but where you've been. Get an aerial view of the beach in that picture. Pinpoint every Thai takeout in your girlfriend's zip code. Plan the Great International Rollercoaster Tour. Here's how.
Get Going
Create applications that let you do all this and more - Make maps that reveal statistical data
- Plot routes to include or avoid key factors
- Build a community site
- Create a realtor's presentation
- Calculate distances for routes
- Show where your holiday photos were taken
- Merge Flickr photos onto a map
- Highlight archaeological information
Companion Web site
Visit http://maps.mcslp.com to find full source code for all hacks and mods in the book, working examples, ongoing information about Google Maps and Google Earth, a blog, and more.
Customer Reviews & Comments
While I enjoyed the author's clear writing style, and I was pleased to see that the level of detail and explanation given in each chapter is consistent, I did not find the book's content to be particularly valuable. The book is organized very well, and it reads like a Google Maps tutorial, rather than a hacks book. The flow from chapter to chapter is similar to the Maps API online documentation, which makes following along with Google's documentation a breeze while reading the book. The first 100 pages were introductory, describing Google Local, the Maps API, ways to store and share information, and so on in very general terms. This puts all users on equal footing, but it seemed odd to see so much basic information in a book about hacking Google Maps. One thing that shocked me, especially given the approach taken in the first 100 pages, was to see all of the examples written in Perl. If the introductory lessons are needed by anyone, chances are that programming / scripting is new to him/her, and I don't see Perl as the appropriate language to learn at that point. Version 1 of the API is used throughout the book, but version 2 was released in April 2006. Version 2 is largely backwards compatible, but Google has asked everyone to move to version 2, saying that v1 support can be turned off at any point. This doesn't take away from the value of the lessons, but it does add some overhead. I consulted Google's documentation and adjusted all of the books examples for the api changes as I read. Another thing that particularly surprised me was the mention of using scraping techniques to extract geocoding data, without mentioning the drawbacks to doing so. Personally, I avoid scraping like the plague. There's no better way to break an app than to scrape its data. Geocoding is part of the v2 api, btw. To summarize, the book is a clearly laid out introduction to using the Google Maps API, and it is written well, but I wouldn't recommend it to a friend. For an introduction to maps, I would consult Google's much-improved online documentation, and O'Reilly's "Google Maps Hacks" is a better read for what I would consider hacks (also written to api v1).
Comment | Permalink |
(Report this)
|
Hacking GoogleMaps and GoogleEarth (ExtremeTech)
List Price: $29.99
Discount: 34 %
Available from Amazon
Price: $19.79
| |
|
|
|
|
