The Google Maps API remains one of the showcase examples of the Web 2.0 development paradigm, making it fairly trivial for third-party developers to incorporate dynamic mapping services into Web applications. In fact, interest in the Google service is so strong that it arguably sparked the mashup phenomenon, along with a number of websites such as http://www.gmapsmania.com intended to highlight some of the exciting applications developers are building using the mapping API.

Google Maps Application Development is the first book to comprehensively introduce the service from a developer-perspective, showing readers how they can integrate mapping features into their Web applications.

Proceeding far beyond creating a simplistic map display, readers are shown how to draw upon a variety of data sources such as geocode.us and the U.S. Census Bureau’s TIGER/Line data to build comprehensive geocoding services for mapping any location in North America.

Readers are also guided through various examples demonstrating how to encourage user interaction such as pinpointing map locations, adding comments, and building community-driven maps.