When is it going to be Google Maps' turn?

Google is slowing eating away at my soul!

Ok, so maybe its not so much eating away at my soul as providing more and more products to control the information that makes up my life. Its definitely one of the two though.

A stream of consciousness I had earlier today is the motivation for this post. I was thinking about that SpanningSync program I mentioned in my previous post and how I had this small reservation to using a program to syn my personal calendar information if it used an intermediate server. It was then that I realized that I would be syncing my Google calendar info with iCal. So Google already has my calendar information. And my email. And my blog. And my photos. And a few documents and spreadsheets. And my web search habits. They basically have my life. And I am ok with that. At some point you have to just trust the other source b/c if you don't you can't get your work done. So I guess I will have to trust Jeff and Google with my life.



It was shortly after those thoughts that I was thinking about Google maps and how so many sites are putting together rather impressive data mashups with their open map api's. I have had a long desire to be able to encode all of my photos with GPS information so that I could view them on an interactive map like Google's. The Gallery product I used to use to host my photos has some nice plugins for their gallery, but I am not sure I want to maintain my photos online anymore. Its nice to be able to show them to friends and family but the vast majority are only really interesting to me. I may again some day. What I would really like is the ability to add GPS data directly to the image files in a lasting manor so that I could view them locally on some type of map program as well as pull the information out to use in whatever else I want.


I am curious .... Google has given its users the ability to access their email online, create share and modify documents and spreadsheets online, share photos online, share their lives (via blogs) online ... why don't they have a service where you can share geographically-tagged data? When is it going to be Google Maps' turn? There are numerous sites geared toward giving people this ability or similar functionality, but none are perfect, free, easy to use, and can integrate well. This site has tons of information google maps, mashups and tools, while this site has some interesting abilities but is public and doesn't have routes or real points like I want.


There is a small side project I have been thinking out lately (and will be posting about shortly) that could really benefit from my being able to store GPS data tied to small descriptions/links as well as route information online that can be included via links or embedding in other mediums (for example, my blog). It would be great if Google had an interface that they tied to your GMail account where you could create GPS points, give them titles, descriptions, tags, etc .... and define "maps" as a collection of points along with a starting map location and zoom level. Basically all of the info that you send back to them when you are using their API. Then, if I wanted to add a map to my blog with lets say, restaurants I have eaten at that I liked, or cool places Em and I have biked .... all I would have to do is past some code into my blog post and Bingo! there it would be. Or I could send a link in an email to someone saying, "Here are some places we were thinking about going this weekend, tell me what you think ....."


The alternative, as far as I can tell, is to either A) host a site of my own and create dynamic pages which contain the Maps API calls along with the information I want or B) Add the API calls to my blog posts and manually maintain the GPS data.


But both of those are technical solutions. In the spirit of Google's many free and easy to use services, a Map service should be added. Now if only I knew someone who worked for Google .... ;-) If anyone has any suggestions of similar services, let me know. I could really use it for what I want to do.