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.

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.

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 performance of Bing Maps was improved in several ways. Microsoft is now serving maps from seven different locations in the world making it faster for the user to access the information requested. The default Bing Maps homepage has seen a size reduction as well from nearly 700 Kilobytes to less than 500 Kilobytes which should be noticeably by and beneficial to low bandwidth connections.

The full list of changes includes:

• Draggable Routes – Yes! This is a great (and much requested) feature added to Bing Maps allowing you to generate a route, then in the case that you need to change the route, you can simply grab any part of it and drag it to where you want the route to actually go. To use draggable routes, click the directions link in the welcome pane or the car icon near the bottom of the welcome pane. Enter a start and end, generate a route, then grab anywhere on the route to move the route line. The route will regenerate for you.
• Zoom Bar – No longer just a zoom in and zoom out button, the zoom bar allows you to jump to specific zoom levels within predefined settings.
• Command Parsing – Want driving directions? Enter “Bellevue, WA to Space Needle” in the Bing Maps search box. Want traffic info? Enter “Seattle Traffic” in the Bing Maps search box.
• Embed a Map – You can now take a map view right from Bing Maps and embed it into your site. To do this, you’ll want to click the Share button once your map is where you want it to be. You can copy the embed code from there; or, you can click the Customize View link which will take you to the embeddable map customizer (EMC). The EMC allows you to set a map to the map height and width (small, medium, large or custom); the map type (static or draggable); the map styles (road, aerial, aerial w/ labels); and, add links to Bing Maps for Viewing a Larger Map or Getting Directions. Once you’ve set everything the way you want it, click Generate Code and boom! there’s your code. You copy it, then paste it into your web page and you’ll have the map you wanted.
• Dynamic Compute – We’ve moved the processing power closer to the user. Using Microsoft’s ECN, we now have Bing Maps running in data centers in 7 locations around the world. This means wherever you are around the world, you will access Bing Maps from the closest geographic node to where you are physically located.
• New Navigation – We also added a subset of features to a button bar along the bottom of the welcome pane. Each button loads features on Bing Maps. Welcome loads the welcome pane; the car loads the route planner; the star loads My Places, formerly called Collections; the envelop loads the ability to share the map with someone via email, copying a URI or embedding the map into a web page (more on that below); the printer icon is for printing; and, stoplight will load a traffic overlay with flow and incident information.
• World Wrap – no longer will your Bing Maps experience stop at the international date line. Keep going around, and around, and around…
• Diet Bing Maps – The default Bing Maps home page dropped from 678kb to 484kb. It zips through the pipes much faster now.

Bing Maps is a service over at Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

One problem that many users experience when using Google Maps is the inability to create maps that do not fit on the computer screen. This usually means to take a screenshot of each part of the map and either keep them as separate images on the computer or to join them together in an image editor. Both options are not very comfortable.

A better solution is the portable software Google Map Buddy which allows the user to download and join any area in Google Maps. The program does that by opening Google Maps in its interface. All navigational options are provided which means it is possible to find a location in the world by searching for it or to get directions by using that feature.

The program offers a small control overlay that can be used to draw a rectangle on the map. This rectangle will be downloaded and joined together later on.

There are two additional steps after drawing the rectangle on the screen. The first is the selection of the zoom level. A higher zoom level results in greater detail but also in additional images that are downloaded and joined in the end. The program will display the number of images that are created. There is also a visual aid if the Draw Helper button is pressed.

The Create Map Image will start start downloading the selected area from Google Maps to the location specified by the user in the file browser. The map parts will be downloaded separately at first and joined in the end. It is furthermore possible to keep the single map images or delete them in the end.

Google Map Buddy is a helpful program for users who want to download or print maps from Google Maps without having to join them afterwards. It is for instance possible to create a detailed map of a specific town or location which would take a long time to create manually due to the many screens it would be displayed on.

The photo maps that are created with the software program can then be published on the web or stored locally. 93 Photo Street is a Java application that is available for Windows and Macintosh operating systems. Users need to import both maps and photos into the software to create the photo maps. Included in the photo software are US road maps which makes it easier for users from the United States (or those that visited the country) to create photo maps.

The photo map creation process is pretty straightforward. It begins with the import of a map and photos. The map is instantly displayed in the application. Pins can be dragged onto the map which represent locations of importance to the user. Photos can then be added to these locations on the map along with a short description (name) for the location.

93 Photo Street supports posting the finished photo map to Typepad or Moveable Type web blogs or to create a generic file using web templates. The generic file can then be launched with any web browser making it ideal for local storage or as static content on Internet domains.

Nokia Map Loader can be used to download selected maps directly to the cell phone using a computer’s Internet connection. The maps come in different sizes ranging from a few Megabytes to 20 and more Megabytes. The size of all maps offered exceeds 3 Gigabytes which would cost a fortune when downloaded over the air directly.

Some user had problems using the Nokia Map Loader application. They did experienced interrupted downloads and criticized that they could not delete single maps once they were downloaded to the cell phone. That’s where the direct download links to all Nokia Maps come in handy. The download links point directly to the files on the Nokia servers and can be downloaded with download managers or directly in the web browser. The page does contain instructions on how to add these maps to the Nokia cell phone as well.

Update: The third party program to download Nokia maps to the local system without Nokia Map Loader is no longer available. There does not seem to be a free alternative available at this time. The only option for users is to use the official Nokia Map Loader application linked above to download maps to their computer that they can then transfer to their Nokia pone.

I found that the information was quite helpful and detailed, there was even loads of info on Budapest where I live. History was accurate and thorough and although there were only 18 places to see, these were well picked with nice photos and descriptions. Tour suggestions were also well written and show pretty much what needs to be seen when traveling to Budapest for the first time, and even events were accurate and updated.

Schmap also makes a desktop application named Schmap Guides Desktop which contains all this data in a downloadable form. You can download various cities, or choose packs which contain all American, all European, or every single destination available. The desktop software is great if you’re traveling somewhere, and it also enables you to print custom guides for yourself, a great way to get to know a place.

The only real problem with Schmap is that there aren’t enough destinations. You’ll find them if you go to big places like capitols, but if you want to go to a seaside city in Italy, you won’t find an entry. I think Schmap would be one of the most useful aps on the net if they manage to build such an infrastructure. Since I’m going to Italy this Summer, I would urge them to hurry up!