Google maps are a wonderful interactive tool.
Here is the world...
<googlemap version="0.9" lat="19.973349" lon="7.03125" type="satellite" zoom="2" width="720" height="500" scale="yes" controls="large">
</googlemap>
Don't you feel like God doing the same with the whole universe? (I let it to your power of abstraction to imagine this can zoom arbitrarily to any given part of the "map").
Embedding on web sites
If you're interesting in embedding google maps on your own web pages (please do!), our own recommendations are as follow.
There is a wonderful extension called (appropriately) Google Maps by Evan Miller. This is the best I have tried so far, and don't feel like trying something else (it does all that you want painlessly).
There are a lot of widgets but you may have to try many of them to find the one that fits your needs/habits.
- MapPress is a popular choice but a bit over-the-top for the actual services it provides. It seems to overload a lot the servers. I found out I had connexions to google maps even when posts (and that's most of them) were not containing any map.
- Xml google maps looks pretty good with a lot of configurable options, but it has an ugly ad to link to the plugin's webpage. Also it's a bit of an overkill if you want simple things (but looks strong for more complex applications). Finally, documentation is exasperating.
- Simple Google Map mistakes simple with simplified. Its main restriction is that it allows only one marker.
Applications
- For the 10 000 IP hit on our web, we displayed a map with locations of visitors. You can read how we did it.
- We have the project to make a map of our trips with a selection of our best photos.