Minimap Sidebar is a Firefox extension with a rich feature set. The extension displays a map in the browser’s sidebar by default which you can use to lookup addresses effortlessly. All it takes is to drag and drop the address into the minimap to have the add-on center on that location on the map.

The map behaves exactly as you would expect it to. You can use the mouse wheel to zoom in or out, hold down the mouse to move around on the map or use controls at the top of the sidebar window to change the map type, toggle traffic information or to add location information manually to the map.

Even better, places are saved automatically so that you can switch through all of them in a heartbeat. That’s useful for Internet users who often need to lookup addresses on map services such as Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, Open Street Map or other services, and those who are creating a list of places to visit.

Minimap Sidebar uses Google Maps by default, with options to switch to Open Street Map instead. Locations can also be opened in tabs or as an overlay preview right on the page the address is displayed on.

And if you do not have an address that you can copy and paste, you can alternatively type in address information manually for the exact same functionality. Once an address has been located on the map, you can open one or multiple services in tabs for more information about the address. Supported services include Google Earth, Flickr, Panoramio or loc.alize.us.

What is more, you can set a home address to speed up retrieving driving information to other locations you have added to the extension.

Export options allow you to export the location as KML, CSV, GPX or minimap files, get a location’s geohash link or latitude and longitude, or search for the place on Amazon, ebay, Maps.com or upcoming.com (events).

The extension supports geo tagging, which means that it will automatically discover if a website you visit supports the technology.

Minimap Sidebar is a useful extension for Internet users who need to lookup addresses or get directions regularly. Instead of having to open a maps website next to the current website, they can now handle everything in one browser window.

Firefox users can download and install the Minimap Sidebar extension from the official Mozilla Firefox add-ons repository.

Update: The Minimap Sidebar add-on has been removed from the official Mozilla Add-ons repository. The Quick Maps extension comes closest, even though it does not display the map information in the sidebar.

This may work if you do not have to look-up many addresses throughout the day, but if you are reaching dozens or even hundreds, you may prefer an automated solution.

Enter Quick Maps for the Firefox web browser. The Firefox add-on integrates direct Google Maps look-ups into the browser.

Just highlight an address in the browser, right-click it and select the Search with Quick Maps option to open an overlay window that displays the address on Google Maps.

The address is marked on the map right away, and you have options to zoom in or out of the map with the mouse wheel or by clicking on the plus and minus icons on the left.

You can furthermore hold down the left mouse button to move the map which can be helpful to locate other objects of interest on the map.

The overlay window remains on the screen until it is closed again. Please note that it is restricted to the web browser borders, and that it will only be displayed in the tab the address was looked-up.

A click on Fullsize Map opens the map in a new browser window. You can alternatively increase or decrease the size of the overlay map window directly. The default view mode can be switched to Terrain or a Satellite view mode.

The extension is useful for Firefox users who need to look-up addresses in the browser regularly. It is compatible with a number of countries, including the US, Germany, Spain, France and the United Kingdom. It should work for other addresses as well, as long as they are displayed in a common address format.

Firefox users can download Quick Maps for the browser from the official Mozilla add-ons repository. The extension can be used without restarting the browser.

Google Chrome users can take a look at Mini Google Maps as an alternative for their web browser.

Update: Quick Maps is also available for Google Chrome. You can visit the developer site here.

Well it basically means that third parties who use the Google Maps Api for services on the Internet will have to pay or stop offering those services once they reach the limit. While that may not be a problem for big companies, it certainly could feel like a blow to the head for free Google Maps services on the Internet.

Lets take a look at the limitations. The price for excess map loads varies from $4 to $10 per 1000 map loads once the limit is reached. The daily limit according to the Google Maps FAQ may begin by 2500 map loads or 25000 map loads depending on the Maps Api used.

While it is unlikely that a small site will hit those usage limits, a popular third party service using the Apis of Google Maps might very well.

According to Google, developers then have three options to deal with the issue. They first can pay for the excess usage, second try to limit their usage below the limits and third purchase a maps Api premier license (fourth stop offering their services, fifths switch to another Maps provider). A purchase price is not revealed on the web, and interesting developers are asked to contact a Google sales representative.

For very popular sites Maps API Premier is likely to be a more cost effective option. It also offers a number of additional benefits, including terms that permit for-fee and internal use, enterprise technical support, a Service Level Agreement, fixed and invoiced annual pricing, and increased quotas for the Maps API Web Services.

Google notes that site exceeding the daily limitations will not stop working immediately (what they mean is the Google Maps part of those sites). Google will start enforcing the new Google Maps Api limits in early 2012.

Google’s motivation to introduce usage limits is to ensure “that even when used by the highest volume for-profit sites, the service remains viable” and to ensure “that Google can continue to offer the Maps API for free to the vast majority of developers for many years to come”.

So what is likely going to happen? The majority of sites and developers won’t probably notice any difference thanks to the the free map load quota. Some developers on the other hand, those running free and highly popular maps powered services, will be forced into a decision that they probably do not want to make. Some may discontinue their services, others may switch to Bing Maps, and a few may turn their services into commercial services to pay for maps access.

What’s your take on the new Google Maps Api usage limitations and Google’s drive to turn their free services into commercial ones? Lets discuss it in the comments.

According to the team, MapsGL “is one of the first large scale applications to be built on top of WebGL” that uses “3D rendering and hardware graphics acceleration” for a seamless, smooth and direct experience in the web browser.

Web users need to visit the Chrome Experiments website to launch the experiment from there. Once done, and provided that the web browser is supporting the technologies used by the experiment, they will notice rendering speed improvements on Google Maps.

MapsGl changes the way how maps and images tiles are rendered both on the server and client side. Previously it was the server that had to pre-render the image tiles before they were sent to the client. With the new technology vector data “for the map is sent to the browser” and rendered there on the fly.

The effect here is that less data needs to be transferred from the Google Maps server to the client PC. The new technology enhances image transitions in Maps by “loading 3D metadata along with image tiles” to enable rich 3D transitions between “different levels and angles of imagery”.

MapsGL requires graphics card that can run WebGL content. Google will automatically block the experiment in cases where the graphics card does not support the technology. The developers note furthermore that MapsGL will fall back on a hybrid approach if the graphics card has poor performance on some operations. This would mean that Google Maps would use pre-rendered raster tiles for the background and only dynamically rendered labels on top of these.

The MapsGL technology should work in many modern web browsers including Google Chrome and the Firefox web browser. Have you played around with the experiment yet? Let me know what you think of it in the comments.

The service is currently only available for hotels in the United State. You start by entering a town and state in the form on the Google Hotel Finder page.

Google then displays a list of hotels in that city. You can modify the shape of the region with a click on edit shape to include or exclude hotels in the listing. Just drag the white dots to a different location to change the size of the area that you want to be included when looking for hotels in that particular region of the country.

Once you are done you can go back to the list to see the changes you made reflected there.

Each hotel is listed with a thumbnail screenshot, name, description, hotel class, user rating, average price per night and how that price compares to the typical price in the selected region.

Some hotels unfortunately lack some of the information, it is possible to exclude most of those by making configuration changes in the sidebar.

Here it is possible to change the check in and check out dates, pricing or class and user rating criteria.

As far as price goes, you can use a slide to set a minimum and maximum price per night, and how the hotel’s price should compare to typical prices.

Hotel class allows you to select a minimum hotel class and minimum user rating that all hotels must have to make it on the list.

The listing can be sorted by hotel class, user rating, price per night and compared to typical information but bot by hotel name. Another thing that is missing is a search filter to display specific hotels faster.

A click on a hotel displays additional information taken from Google Places. This includes photos, reviews by Google users, address and phone numbers as well as the hotel’s Internet address and additional information that the owner of the hotel has added to Google Places.

You can click on the domain to be taken to the hotel or click on Book to book the hotel. The booking links often display advertisements (e.g. to hotel booking sites such as Priceline, GetaRoom, Agoda or Booking.com) but also always a link to the owner site to book right there.

Would I use Google Hotel Finder exclusively to find a hotel to stay in when visiting the United States? The answer to that question has to be no. User reviews on Google Places are notoriously easy to manipulate, and while you could say that this is also the case on sites such as Tripadvisor, the latter often have lots of reviews per hotel instead of just a handful that Google Places offer.

It is nevertheless a nice maps mashup, and the ability to sort hotels by price and price comparison is rather nice. The strongest feature is the ability to select the region that you want your hotel to be in detail. Google highlights popular regions on that map which is another plus.

You can try out Google Hotel Finder here on this page.

One of the issues that businesses and webmasters who take care of the listing for businesses experience from time to time is the dreaded “We currently do not support the location”.

This basically returns a blank page with the error message instead of the businesses listing on Google Places. I actually experienced this message twice in the last three months for a client.

It can be a serious blow to the businesses operations if it is not found on Google Places anymore. One might now assume that this message appears on purposes because something’s wrong with the listing, or maybe even the Google account in question.

This is however often not the case. The We currently do not support the location seems to be a bug in Google Places that a lot of local businesses have experienced in the last time.

I do suggest you check the email account linked to your Google Account and your Google Webmaster Tools account first to see if you got any emails or warnings from Google. The next thing that you need to do is to open your Places listing in your Google Account to check for changes or messages there.

If everything appears all right, you can try the following solution to bring your local business listing back on Maps.

The fix that worked in my client’s case both times was to make a change to the Google Places listing. The easiest way to do that is to post an update. You find the “Share an update on your place page” on the right side of the Places listing.

Just enter an update into the form and hit the Share button afterwards. Write about a new product or special offer for instance. I had to wait about 15 minutes before the local business appeared again on Google Places. The We currently do not support the location message was gone.

You can also make other changes, like adding or removing text from the site’s description, business hours or categories. Make sure you do not change the businesses location or other information related to that.

I hope this helps some local businesses who are fighting with the same bug on Google Places.

The first public release of the free Windows software Google Trail changes this. The application offers functionality to create custom Google Earth maps from web mail maps, which can then be imported into Garmin devices that support custom maps. This is done intuitively in the default web browser of the system.

Users should note that the application uses Microsoft’s Silverlight technology, which means that Silverlight needs to be installed at least for the default browser to make use of the app.

The application itself launches in a command line window which loads a local web page that displays the application interface in the default browser. This web page displays a web map with controls.

The map provider is available for selection at the top left corner of the screen, as are the available display modes. Normal is selected by default, which can be changed to Satellite, Hybrid or Terrain. There are controls to change the zoom level and pan the screen. Zooming and panning can also be done independently with the mouse and mouse-wheel, which most users should find more comfortable.

One interesting option of GoogleTrail is the ability to add maps from other map providers on top of the currently displayed map, which basically can be used to merge multiple maps into one. The opacity of each map that is added as an overlay is individually customizable.

The View menu holds options to create a custom map which can be saved in a Garmin compatible custom map format, and to draw track information directly on the screen which can later be saved as GPX files.

A custom map is created by selecting custom map from the menu first. It is then necessary to zoom in on the area that should be included in the custom map. A click on Draw Area enables the draw mode which can be used to draw a rectangle around the area that should be part of the custom map.

Select highlighted area saves the information. It is furthermore possible to activate the buttons is first tile available and is last tile available to check if all map tiles are available so that they can be downloaded later on.

A click on build map starts the build process which displays the approximate kmz map size. Save map finally saves the map as a map project.

It is then required to start the map downloader which is linked from the start menu and the application directory.

The kml file can be generated after the tiles have been downloaded. This is done by switching to the Generate KML tab in the application. The last map tile download directory is automatically selected, and all that’s left is to enter a name for the KML file. This file can then be imported into a Garmin device, or any other device for that matter that supports the KML format.

The second available option is to create gpx files. This is done by selecting Draw Track from the selection menu.

Here it is possible to load, save and edit gpx files. Track data can be imported via GPX files which are then shown on the map. Tracks and waypoints can be edited with the application before they are saved to the local system.

Google Trail is available for download at the official CodePlex website. The developer has posted Word documents that explain the core functionality of the program. Users who are stuck should take a look at those to understand the workflow. The application is compatible with the Windows operating system, it tested fine on a 64-bit Windows 7 system.

Mini Google Maps for the Google Chrome browser improves that process dramatically. The extension adds a single button to the Chrome toolbar that opens a minimalistic Google Maps interface right on the same page.

The two core features of Google Maps, location look ups and directions are both accessible from within the interface.
Users who enter an address or location in the form at the top of the Mini Google Maps extension window are taken directly to that location in the window. The form acts as a standard text form which means that it supports copy and paste. It is therefor possible to copy an address from a website and paste it into the form.

The second option becomes available with a click on the Get Directions link in the window. The location input form changes into two address fields to display directions between these two locations in the world.

The directions are are then added to the Google Maps window in the Chrome browser.

Mini Google Maps furthermore offers to change the map view from map to terrain or satellite, set a default location and change the size of the Google Maps window.

The Google browser extension has been designed as a way to access Google Maps information faster. It lacks several Google Maps features, from adding multiple destinations over transit information to the my maps feature and export and printing options.

The developer has already announced plans to add some of the missing features, like traffic and weather, to the Google Chrome extension. Probably the biggest missing feature right now is the inability to send addresses on websites to the extension directly.

Google Chrome users can download and install Mini Google Maps from the Google Chrome Extensions website.

Update: The Mini Google Maps extension for the Chrome browser has been discontinued. An alternative is the Mini Maps extension which provides a similar functionality.

Before we begin, let us have a quick look at what Google Maps is all about. Google Maps is, according to Google themselves, “a Google service offering powerful, user-friendly mapping technology and local business information, including business locations, contact information, and driving directions.” Now this statement summarizes what Google Maps does in one word: everything. Right from planning your trip and marking places on maps, to obtaining driving directions to drive to a particular place, Google Maps does it all. It is the most comprehensive mapping service available on the internet, and by putting it to good use, the traveler can make his travels a whole lot cooler and more enjoyable.

There are some unique features that Google Maps offers, and these include:

• Comprehensive business listings that include information like open hours, payment types accepted, phone numbers, websites, email addresses and reviews, all in one place.
• Multiple views of places, with the option to choose satellite images or Google’s proprietary Street View images. Street View deserves a special mention because this initiative by Google aims to provide images of everything that can be accessed by road all over the world, and has been successfully implemented in more than a few parts of the world. With Street View, you can get to know how your exact destination (a hotel or a restaurant) will look right from your home.
• Integration with Google Earth: Google Earth combined with Google Maps gives you 3D images of terrain from Google Earth on Google Maps, which is useful to check out uncharted areas, or areas that are not easily accessible by road. This is an excellent feature and enables you to prepare to the greatest possible extent for your trip.
• Driving directions: yes, Google Maps offers detailed, comprehensive and accurate driving directions with just the click of a button. Just enter the starting point and destination and get driving directions, mostly in the shortest possible routes, and also with approximate traveling times. This is as comprehensive as it gets.
• Flexible map settings: you can zoom in and out, pan across, and tilt the maps – any way you like. Google Maps provides 360 degree views, and all the above features combined give you the feel of actually being in the place that you want to go to, without actually traveling.

Having looked at the unique features offered by Google Maps, let us now look into how to actually use individual features to plan that perfect trip. First, you would want to plan your trip using Google Maps. The reason we want to use Google Maps here is that as mentioned above, Google Maps contain all information that is necessary, i.e. street and road names, business listings, places to visit, and so on. SO planning your trip using Google Maps only makes sense. All you need is a Google account, and of course, the trip that you intend to plan. Once you’ve logged into Google Maps (maps.google.com) using your Google account, just click on “My Maps” and then “Create new map”. Then give it the appropriate name, preferably including the year and name or purpose of destination, such as “London 2010, Vacation”, and select whether your map should be Public or Unlisted. Selecting “Public” makes the map accessible by anyone, so exercise caution here. Selecting “Unlisted” enables you to share it only with people you choose. Having done this, search for places and businesses that you will be visiting during your trip on Google Maps. As you hover the mouse cursor over each listing, a small pop-up window appears, displaying brief information about the place. Select “Save to My Maps” to save the particular listing onto your map. Select all necessary places, before finishing. You can even customize the map by placing icons over listings, like a house icon over a hotel, a movie ion over a cinema, and so on. You can also print the map to give all members of the group an idea as to where everything is.

Having planned your trip, you now need driving directions, or, if you choose to, select public transportation options. Yes, that can be done as well with Google Maps. Let’s see how to obtain driving directions using Google Maps. Once you’ve gotten to the Google Maps website, all you need to do is click on “Get Directions” on the menu on the top, type the names of the starting place and the destination, and click on the “Get Directions” button that is present right under the destination box. You can thus obtain driving directions easily using Google Maps. Another great feature is the availability of getting directions for public transport and walking. Once you click on “Get Directions” as mentioned above, you get a drop down menu with three items: “By Car”, “By Public Transit” and “By Walking”. Select “By Public Transit” and get detailed instructions as to which buses to get onto, which trains to board, and which flights to catch. This really is a great feature that provides comprehensive information that is really very handy. If you select “By Walking”, then it gives you the best possible route in which you can walk to the destination. All this information is available as more and more public transportation services post their schedules and timings online. Google Maps collects all this information, and by integrating it into Google Maps, creates the easiest user interface ever, and helps in planning a trip down to the last minute detail.

Another great feature is availability of future information as well. If you are leaving on a specific date, all you’ve got to do is enter the specific dates, and you’ll get all the train, bus and flight schedules for that particular day. Google Maps will also display if the place of interest that you want to visit is closed on that particular day. Thus using the Internet’s best free travel planner to your advantage; you can achieve the perfect trip and travel in peace and happiness.

The attack was dreamt up by security expert Sam Kamkar who demonstrated at the Black Hat hackers conference a website exploiting common shortcomings in a router to reveal it’s real-world location.

He tricked the router into believing the request for it’s ID information was coming from the connected PC, not from the Internet.  He then used the revealed MAC address with a geo-location feature in Firefox to interrogate the database Google gathered when it made its Street View photographs.

The data, which was controversially gathered, linked the MAC addresses of routers to GPS co-ordinates.  “This is geo-location gone terrible,” said Mr Kamkar during his presentation. “Privacy is dead people. I’m sorry.”

Mikko Hyponnen, senior researcher at F Secure called the demonstration “very interesting” adding that such a technique could be used for “stalking or targeted attacks against an individual”.

“The fact that databases like Google Streetview’s Mac-to-Location database or the Skyhook database can be used in these attacks just underlines how much responsibility companies that collect such data have to safeguard it correctly.” said Mr Hypponen

In 2005, Mr Kamkar created a work that helped him gain more than 1 million MySpace friends in a single day.

All that needs to be done to map the locations is to paste the spreadsheet information into the form on the Batchgeo website. The online service will automatically use the first row as identifiers which means that users need to make sure that it contains those. Identifiers such as zip, address or city need to be linked to the right columns in case the automatic detection does not do that correctly.

Batchgeo creates a Google Map with the location of the spreadsheet displayed on the map. It is then possible to save, print and share the map that has been created, download Google Earth KML data or download the geocoding results again.

All Google Maps view modes are available (map, satellite, hybrid and terrain).

There does not seem to be an option to directly embed the mapped information on a website, only to create a static url on the batchgeo website. The blog mentioned a button to create the embed code but the button is nowhere to be found on the site.

Batchgeo can be a handy program, especially for users who need to create a map from location information stored in a spreadsheet.

Many users have expressed privacy concerns as Google Street View photos often show people, buildings and cars in the photos that are taken. Faces are automatically blurred but it often is possible to identify a person regardless of that. Identification of individuals on Street View pictures seems to the the main privacy concern in most cases.

Google Street View is not available in all countries. Users who open Google Maps for instance can find out if it is available by zooming in beyond the highest zooming level or by dragging and dropping a yellow pegman icon into a location on a map.

Many Google Maps and Google Earth users do not know that it is possible to report inappropriate Street View content to Google. This can be done by clicking on the little Report a Problem link in the lower left corner of a Google Street View image.

This opens a new webpage with options to report privacy concerns, inappropriate content or other. A click on privacy concerns shows options to report a face, house or car / license plate to Google to have it removed from Street View.

It is necessary to describe the problem, add an email address and to center the image in the right angle so that the inappropriate content is shown on it.

The page offers no information on how long it takes for Google to process the request and if it ensures that the inappropriate view will be removed from the service.

But some websites do not. They simply display an address on their website and it is up to the user to open a maps application to find the location on a map.

The address information usually need to be entered manually by the user which is another nuisance.

The Google Chrome extension Select to Get Maps offers a faster option to look up locations on Google Maps.

This is done by selecting an address on a website. The extension will scan the selected text to find out if it is indeed an address and if it is will display an overlay menu directly next to the highlighted address with options to load the address in Google Maps.

The extension will only send the selected text to Google Maps if it “believes” that the text could be an address. This is only the case if the text is between 3 to 15 words and consists of letters and numbers.

The extension seems to be unable to identify some addresses, especially if the address information are displayed on multiple lines on the website. It works best if the address is displayed in a single line.

The basic interface makes it easy to display a specific map in the application which can then be downloaded. It is possible to either use the initial map to zoom to the location in the world map or to enter a location in the form at the top. The program will automatically zoom to that location then. Users need to make sure to uncheck the offline checkbox first so that new map tiles can be downloaded from the Internet.

The mouse can be used to scroll around on the map. It is also possible to use the slider on the left or to right-click and select the zoom in or out option to change the zoom level of the map.

The map view can be changed from map to satellite and terrain. A click on the Download button will display the download option where the user can fine tune the latitude, longitude, area width and height as well as the minimum and maximum zoom level.

The maps are then downloaded to the local computer system so that they become available in offline viewing mode.

The settings of the Google Maps offline viewer can be used to change various parameters of the program including the download directory for map tiles, the window size of the application, edit locations to access them easier, place markers or enable GPS mode.

GMapCatcher is available for Microsoft Windows and Linux operating systems. The software can be downloaded from the Google Code page. (via Blogs DNA)

The way is also outlined on the map which will automatically zoom in or out so that the starting point and destination are shown on the map.

The results can be customized further. It is for instance possible to add another destination or to open the options which can be used to configure several additional parameters like forcing Google Directions to avoid highways and tools or to switch between miles and km/h.

Another interesting option is the ability to change the route directly with the mouse. Just move the mouse over the route to do that. A small overlay should appear that notifies the user that the route can be changed by dragging it around.

Another interesting option provided by Google Directions is life traffic which can be displayed for selected countries (England, France, USA) which uses a colored system to display fast or slow traffic on the map.

Some steps of the directions have photos next to it. A click on such a photo will display an image of that location on the same page which can sometimes aid the orientation.

The directions can be printed so that they can be used on the trip. Google Directions can be accessed by anyone with an Internet connection.

Google Map Saver is a portable software program that feels more responsive and less complicated to use. The user can enter a location or point of interest and the program will download the available data from Google Maps. This process takes a few seconds the most on fast connections. The usual Google Maps controls are available including zooming in and out, moving around with the mouse or switching between map, satellite and terrain view.

The zoom factor and map type can also be changed in pulldown menus at the top. Images of the maps that are displayed can be saved in various resolutions (e.g. window size, iPhone, HD 1080 or custom formats up to 4096×4096. Various output formats including jpg, png, targa and bmp are available. The resulting images can be large (40+ Megabytes) if the highest resolutions are selected.

Google Map Saver is an uncomplicated program that can be used to save locations in Google Maps in a short period of time. The program is portable and available at the developer’s homepage. The watermark can be removed by clicking on the globe in the upper right corner to get to the about page and there on the Activate button which will remove the watermark. (via Technobuzz)

Bing Maps 3D is an add-on for Bing Maps which activates the 3D mode. This mode adds the possibility to zoom and rotate in 3D. Probably the most interesting aspect of the add-on are the 3D models of buildings and sights that have been added to the map. Among the cities are New York, Las Vegas, Tokyo and Berlin.

Bing Maps 3D can be installed in two different ways. The first option is to visit the Bing Maps website and click on the 3D link in the upper left control panel. This will open a window with the possibility to download Bing Maps 3D. The second possibility is to download the add-on directly from a Microsoft server. The web browser needs to be closed and restarted after installation. The installation displays (preselected) options to switch to MSN as the homepage and Bing as the default search engine. Users who do not want this should ensure that they have unchecked the options.

A fast video card and Internet connection is advised to enjoy Bing Maps 3D.

Trendsmap is a Google Maps and Twitter mashup that solves both of these problems. The tool displays a world map that is displaying popular topics based on the region the user is looking at. It is for instance possible to see right now that the people in the Philippines are tweeting about the typhoon Pepeng while the most popular topics on the US west coast are the movie Zombieland, Halloween and the NL West Champs.

Since Trendmaps is a Google Maps mashup it is possible to zoom in and out of the map. This only makes sense in regions of the world where Twitter is a popular form of communication. A click on a popular topic will display trends and latest messages on the same screen. The box that is displayed on the right side of the website usually contains a short description of the trend and links to websites for additional information.

Trendsmap is an interesting Google Maps Twitter mashup. More so for researchers and users who like to stay up to date on certain topics.

Offline Maps is a software program for Microsoft Windows that offers the following functionality to users and developers:

The application provides following functionality to its users:

• The ability to download tiles to a folder on your computer of a given zoomfactor along a path
• The ability to view the downloaded tiles in the application
• The ability to draw a path on the map and save that path to a file
• The ability to receive data from a GPS device and position the map at the points received from the device

To developers it provides following functionality

• The ability to develop new layers with specific functionality
• The ability to draw on the map using longitude and latitude coordinates
• The ability to draw on the map using regular coordinates

The developer provides access to a version for the Microsoft Windows operating system and a mobile version for Windows Mobile devices. Supported are Google Maps and Open Street Maps. It is furthermore possible to load maps that have already been downloaded from either service. Several additional options are provided in the layers tab including ripping, routing and GPS options.

The software program requires the Microsoft .net Framework. Interested users can download it from the Codeplex website.

Each tour is taking the day the sights are visited into account to include anniversaries and festivals that might take place at one of the days of the tour. The tour overview on the left side will list the name of the sights and the traveling time between sites (only walking time, might be a good idea to check for other means of transportation).

The tour is displayed on Google Maps with the usual options of zooming in and out of the map and printing parts of it.

One interesting option provided by Google City Tours is the ability to add or remove sights from the tour. This is extremely useful if a sight is not listed in the default tour. It can also be handy to remove sights that are of no interest to the individual or group. The Google Maps service will calculate the new tour. It is even possible to remove all sights and plan a tour individually.

Google City Tours is an excellent online tool that aids individuals and groups plan city tours.

Update: Google City Tours has been discontinued and is no longer available.