DASNET

Google Maps has been getting a lot of customization lately. I'm beginning to wonder if a more organized approach is going to be needed, before this spirals out of control (or grinds to a halt under its own weight). Here are some ideas that I hope will get people thinking and, maybe, working, to build a better, more extensible, more usable system of custom maps and data overlays. Of course, if we go too far down this path, we'll simply be creating a custom GIS tool, but there are worse things, right?

There's no doubt about it -- Google Maps is cool. It's not providing much more in terms of information than other, competing map services, but it more than makes up for that in terms of user interface. It's the easiest, most intuitive way to look at maps.

Of course, it's limited to whatever maps Google wants to provide. Some very good maps, certainly, but not always everything people might want. Almost from the start, I'd wanted to see additional map types added to Google, and in recent weeks they've added some of their Keyhole images (down to about 1 meter resolution or so). But I'd wanted to see better resolution (we have USGS Urban area photography available to almost 1/4 meter), and also topographic maps.