As if the world needs another post looking at Google Maps. It’s super cool and all, but I’m left annoyed at the only hacks into it I’ve seen so far. I’m not interested in creating and maintaining an XML file so I can annotate my own addresses there.
You can already produce a url that’ll point GM at a specific address. http://maps.google.com?q=36255+Michigan+Ave,+Wayne,+MI,+48184, for example.
Add a “z=(1-14)” to it and you can auto-zoom to any of it’s 14 levels of detail, too.
But what if you want to annotate that url without going into XML? The XML field name used is “title”, but so far none of my attempts to wedge “title=” or “t=” into the url are having any effect.
The whole reason to this is for using Google Maps from a website to provide a map & directions, accepting that they’ll eventually add advertising, like every other Map Server does, but specifying what title should accompany the address shown in the pop-up bubble, too.
Here are the querystring variable names that I know DO work so far:
“q=”: Either an address or query topic to search for.
“near=”: An optional address (specific or not) to base the “q=” search around.
“z=”: Zoom level to use.
Anyone know any other url variables to use, or which var would add a title to the output?