I love maps - love reading them, analyzing them, staring at them - anything. I can spend tons of time doing this. When Google Earth came out I played with it for hours - [ahem] not on company time, of course - and when Google Maps interfaces started coming out, I wanted one. Alas, I had not the technical skill to create a mash-up with the Google Maps API. What was a cartographically-inclined-but-technically-challenged guy like me to do?

Imagine my pleasure when I stumbled one night onto the "My Maps" feature on the main Google Maps page. It sits at the top of the left side-bar, next to Get Directions. Select it and you can browse a number of other people's maps (many useful, or, at least, interesting) or create your own. You get the standard Google Map as a canvas and can then plot push-pins (or a number of other symbols), lines, or areas on the map, giving each its own color along with the standard fly-out description box in which you can embed formatted text, links, and images. You can even see the results in Google Earth. It is all a matter of clicking and dragging. Really cool.

Below is the map I made - Traditional Small Boats of the World - as a spin-off of my personal blog, Chine bLog, my commentary on small wooden, traditional, and tradition-inspired boats. I wanted to show notable traditional boats plotted in their native waters, so people can compare designs across geography. Select one of the push-pins to see the boat and links to deeper information about it. To the best of my knowledge, no other resource like this exists anywhere and I created it in the span of a few evenings.

Use your imagination with the concept. Would it be valuable to plot projects, chapters, regions, or other programmatic features on a map and let users access that content in this manner? This is yours for the taking, all for the price of your time. Enjoy!


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