How to use Google Maps - Part2

Getting started
Before we get in to how it's done, let's look at the results. Fire up Firefox and install the Greasemonkey Firefox plug-in that allows you to inject some dynamic behavior into viewed web pages; you'll have to restart Firefox for it to take effect. Relaunch Firefox, and install the Google maps user annotation script by simply clicking right-clicking on the link (CTRL-click for one-button mouse Mac users) in this sentence and choosing "Install user scripts..." Then, load up the URL of our annotated Ithaca map in a new tab so you can switch back to this how-to easily. Click on the "Display Points" link, and you'll zoom in to our annotated Ithaca walk.



This map works like any other Google map, except for the fact that we've created it ourselves and added media to it. You can click on a waypoint to get more information, or generate driving directions to and from points as usual. When you click on one of our points, you'll notice it will have either a picture or a movie link associated with it:



The best way to follow the map tour is to right-click (CTRL-click Mac) and open the media file in a separate browser tab, because following a link and clicking the back button will break the script and revert the map back to its default state, from which you'll have to click the "Display Points" link and start all over again. If you right-click the "movie" link in the above example, you'll see a 30 second 360-degree video we took from the center of the Ithaca Commons. If you right-click on the "1 more" link it will open a tab with a Google query ("Ithaca Commons") we've also linked to — you can add links to any URL on the web, not just your media files. Load up a waypoint with a "picture" link, right-click on it and you'll see an image we shot at that location.

Now that we've seen what we're about to create, let's get started.

We'll leave the finer details of collecting your media files and waypoints up to you — that's the easy part. Just gather your GPS and camera and have at it, or take your images and geolocate them later using Geocode.com if you prefer that method. Similarly, we'll let you handle the editing and preparation of your images and video files, and start in at the nitty-gritty stage.

You'll need a place to host your media files and the XML file we're going to create that specifies your map data. If you already have a Flickr account, you can host images there, and if you don't have one, we highly recommend it as a value-added image hosting service. You can host up to 100 images for free, and link to them from elsewhere.