Cool uses of Google Maps

Lately a number of sites and developers have been tapping into Google Maps to create great new tools. Any of these ideas would be fantastic on news sites. Here are eight of the coolest ones:

• HousingMaps: Craigslist apartment listings plotted on Google Maps
• Found City: A community-generated map of interesting places in New York City
• Google Sightseeing: A blog that shows "the best tourist spots in the world via Google Maps' satellite imagery."
• Google-Traffic.com: Maps traffic data onto Google Maps
• Google Maps Wallpapers: Merges Google Maps satellite "tiles" to produce wallpaper or a poster
• Cheap Gas: Find cheap gas prices, powered by gasbuddy and Google Maps

And the following, created by Adrian Holovaty, ljworld.com's lead devloper:
• Entertainment locations listed on Lawrence.com are shown on mini-Google Maps inserted on the site's pages
• Chicago transit maps on Google Maps
• ChicagoCrime.org. ong the cool features on this site:
    - You can view crimes by type, location and a number of other criteria and see them plotted on a Google Map.
    - Every city block in Chicago has a detail page with its latest crimes and links to crimes within 1, 2, 3, 5 or 8 blocks.
    - RSS feeds for every block and police beat in the city.

May 19, 2005 | BY JONATHAN DUBE