Have you ever imagined how your house, office building, school, playground and neighbourhood appear to the little birdie in the sky? Try visualizing it. Don’t worry if you can’t……visit Google maps!!! Google maps (henceforth Gmaps) makes it possible to have a “bird’s eye view” of our own earth and its neighbours in space- moon & mars. Before I fly to further features of Google maps, here’s Lord’s Cricket Ground as seen on Google maps.

So, what is Google Maps?

The Map view consists of topographical images and displays the continents, countries, cities etc down to the street level, labeling the roads and crossroads. As the name suggests,Satellite view makes use of images taken from satellite together with aerial images.

 

Hybrid view is a combination of the Map View superimposed upon Satellite View.

Terrain view renders what we see as physical (features) map in atlases, with street view having natural and man-made structures stand out (see right). Only physical map is rendered for places where structures can not be displayed in high relief (see below).

 

To the upper-left is the Zoom Control. The small window to the bottom-right of above map is an Overview Control that allows quick navigation. These controls appear at their default positions in the above map and can be repositioned when embedding maps into websites. To add content to the map, Overlays are user. For ex. the green arrow in our Times Square example is an Overlay. Gmap provides the following overlays:

Points are displayed using Markers. Lines are displayed using Polylines (representing a collection of points). Areas on the map are displayed as polygons. Another overlay- the info window is a special kind of overlay that can contain descriptive text/HTML about other overlays.

Gmaps can be included in websites by registering for an API key.

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GOOGLE MAPS API

It’s an Application Programming Interface provided by Google that exposes objects and methods that allows developers to embed Gmaps in websites programmatically. One needs to register for an API key using his/her Gmail account. The service is free for websites that are free for consumers. Once registered, you will be directed to a page that will provide sample code to embed Gmaps in your page. More on this can be read at the sign up page-http://www.google.com/apis/maps/signup.html.

When I began anew with Gmaps, I thought it would be tough understanding and implementing Gmaps with the API. Soon, I discovered that Javascript, Ajax, XML and JSON are the technologies underlying Google maps and these were very familiar names to me (I hope you’ve heard of them too). A Map constitutes collection of Tiles (images). These images are downloaded when the user drags or pans the map out of the current view port. This downloading takes place in the background i.e. the page won’t post back. I as a user of the API find it to be very simple to implement.

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What does Gmaps has in store?

Gmaps is an excellent example of web-cartography. It can be applied to virtually any thing that has a geographical coordinate. The number of sites utilizing this potential is growing fast. Maps are the perfect place to market yourself and your business! Gmaps can be put to use in: 1. Marking your internet presence by creating a map that lists your home, school, college,office, neighbourhood, friends…..etc. 2. Listing the places one has visited on the map. 3. Be an E-Tourist and travel to anyplace across the world virtually. 4. The number of internet tourist is growing fast and there are sites targeting virtual tourists too. http://www.traveldodo.com/travel-guide/india/lists the places to visit on map (ex. India). Also note the nicely designed Zoom control. 5. See Promotional videos for famous places marked at http://todaysstory.googlepages.com/promo.htm. 6. http://googlesightseeing.com/map/is a site that lists surprising images caught on Google maps submitted by its users over the world. 7. Google maps is most common and a must have in all real estate websites like Trulia and Colorado Homes Stop. These sites feature properties that are displayed on the map by geocoding property address. The user is presented with all properties on the map and he/she can easily navigate to another property location and view its details in the info window. 8. Google maps is widely popular amongst social networking websites. Let’s take up Zolve for example. Zolve is a Real Estate Social Networking site. The map displays member’s Sphere of Influence [Friends Network] page. Few points that emphasize the extent to which maps can be tailored to fit requirements:

The red ( ), green ( ) and blue( ) markers tell us about the member’s business type.

• The sphere member is discriminated from the sphere-network member using encircled dots ( ) for the first one and encircled triangles ( ) for the other.

• The numbers ( ) depict the presence of more than one member at the same place.

The proper use of Google maps depends on ones ingenuity and requirements.

Links: 1. Wish to draw your own map? http://quikmaps.com/new 2. Find out how far is it… on http://www.geodistance.com/

Safety or shall we call it keeping away from harm and, security which may be termed as protection from any harm are an integral part of every society ranging from east to west or north to south of the globe. When these two combine, form something which can be termed as pre-issue termination. In the developed side of the world this forms an integral part of daily curriculum and life. Let us simply check a life cycle to explain this. With reference to developed world, when the child is born, safety handbook of various vaccinations, hygiene etc is provided to the parents. As the child grows older, parents through literature or websites are provided the precautions to child’s habits. Like of eating (or tasting) every particle that comes in their path etc. Even the art of keeping a vigil is provided as a help or assistance. Now the child enters the pre teens demanding their first vehicle – a bicycle. Again some assistance is provided in the form of teaching how to keep them safe as they ride a bike. Then the important age of teens when their body becomes a question to themselves, this guides them through their unexplored body mechanisms. As the child passes this and enters the world of earning their living, they are provided handbook by their employers on how to keep themselves safe and fit for work. Even as they travel, they are provided a summary of how the destination climate is and what the place is like. New life then enters their own in the form of family they take raise and hence the wheel of life again comes to the top.

This is how the life is in a developed world where there is complete literature of how a person needs to function is suggested. It is a great suggestion ton how a life should be led safely. In India, how far is this side explored? It can be a measly 2-3% and that too something which is not read as religiously as a tabloid! It might however be added that there are lot many things still left to handle before we move ahead. Anyways that does not give us a reason not to go ahead. Let us explore something which actually happened sometime back. As the Tsunami catastrophe struck southern India, many NGO’s from all around the world extended their hand by sending their relief team to help the local government. They were not provided the handbook on the current situation that was. With the corpses lying unattended, a lot of diseases took over and due to susceptible nature; these were transferred to the relief workers. Instead of being help they became the victim themselves. BIG ISSUE! There could have been an E-man or shall we say E-Governance help which would’ve rescued them from this condition.

What is e-governance? It’s simply an e-person clad in the business suit, providing what we need always – guidance. It ranges from the suggestion of people on how to travel in an airline, bus, train or any other mode of transport to health hygiene and personal care. It is an integral part of the industries being their guide of what they can give back to society (which includes their own workforce). Still in its premature state in India, it is gaining pace however. It is a known fact that Indians are considered good at multitasking. Well are we? We simply need to channel it properly. E-governance is not a simple literature or a scripture; it is a guide or our best assistant (because one needs to help him / her self before helping others). We need this from our birth to the birth of our next generation. Hence the e-governance is something that needs to run all the time along us to provide us the food for thought for our own help.

Now comes another thing to our minds; does printing of material on this ever changing world good enough to solve our issue? Answer is as easy as the question sounds! We need a space, a much bigger space to store all of this and make it as distributable as emails. Hence don’t need to be Einstein to figure out that the place we can put it to is the web space. Now the information era is at its peak and everybody has their hands to information as and when they require. In our sphere however, putting so much of information is cumbersome. Here what we require is the hand of our very own government. We need huge databases, updatable quickly. Government has to be very serious in this regard as it would help us get more tourists, students and many other benefits on international stage.

So if the plan goes like clock work, when I head off for a tour in the north eastern states in next 2-3 years, whom do I choose as my guide? Any guesses? Well, our very own e-person clad in the business suit we will term as our E-GOV-MAN! We just need to check on the speed and hope that this finishes off sooner than the 5 year plans though!