Google Releases Mapplets - Gadgets for Maps

Google release Mapplets, gadgets for maps.

Google Maps added another one Mapplets today besides the Street View. These Mapplets are like gadgets for the maps. Suppose you want to find the movie times near your area, it will give the listings in the map with show times, once you decide where to go, you can get directions.

To get a preview of this Mapplets click here, they have movie show time, just click the zip code and the movie name; it will list the theaters near your zip code.

A typical Google Maps with Mapplets will appear as follows, with the Mapplets showing at the left of the maps, just click the ones you want, those features will appear in the map. Here Google Trends Mapplet is used.



Besides this, there are number of Mapplets available now, and more will be added soon since it is open to developers. They have Google Trends on a map, if you are a website owner, you can see where the visitors come from. You can also check local gas prices, distance measurement between two points, Chicago Transit authority routes, Real Estate Search etc. You can get the complete list of Mapplets click here.

This is the definition of Mapplets by Google: Mapplets are mini-webpages that are served inside an IFrame within the Google Maps site. You can put anything inside this mini-webpage that you can put into a normal webpage, including HTML, Javascript, and Flash. Google provides a Javascript API that gives the Mapplet access to services such as manipulating the map, fetching remote content, and storing user preferences.

Before Google Maps used to provide this sole mashup for maps, but now it wants to utilize the open source to get more mashups. From that experiment came all these Mapplets.

You may not find all of them useful, but there are a few you will find it useful such as the gas buddy, movie information.

Ref: O'Reilly