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Jess Lee, Product Manager, Google Maps on official Google blog has announced the avilabilty of My Maps.

Nowadays, people make maps online using tools like the Google Maps API — but using an API isn’t as easy as scribbling on a cave wall.

That’s why we’re announcing My Maps, a new feature that makes it quick and easy to create your own custom Google Maps just by pointing and clicking. You can add placemarks, draw lines and shapes, and embed text, photos and videos — all using a simple drag and drop interface. Your map automatically gets a public URL that you can share with your friends and family, or you can also publish your map for inclusion in Google Maps search results. We’ll continue to show organic local search results with red pushpins; user-generated results will have blue pushpins. The user-created results include KML as well as maps made through My Maps.

To give you a better idea of what kind of maps you can make, here are some examples that Googlers created after we released the feature internally. (We ran a contest and gave a Nintendo Wii to the best map-maker.)

• America’s Highway: Oral Histories of Route 66: A glimpse into life on the legendary (and now-decommissioned) highway, and what drivers will find there today
• Around Japan in 28 Days: Catalogs a trip across Japan that can be done in 3 weeks
• 2004 Presidential Election: Red states, blue states, and election stats for each
• The World of Hello World: A map of programming languages and rough locations in the world where they were created
• Olympic Host Cities: Cities that have hosted the Olympic Games with links to related Wikipedia information
• The Googleplex: A photo essay on life at the Google headquarters in Mountain View
• Monster Sightings: Locations of monster sightings across the globe

1. Go to Google Maps.
2. Click My Maps > Create new map.
3. Add a title and description for your map. You can make your map public or unlisted.
4. Use the icons in the the top right corner of the map. These include:
   • Selection tool - Use this to drag the map and select placemarks, lines, and shapes.
   • Placemark tool - Use this to add placemarks.
   • Line tool - Use this to draw lines.
   • Shape tool - Use this to draw shapes.

You can use HTML in the placemark description, but some elements, like script, is prohibited, but you can use the blink tag and the image tag!

After adding one or two placemarks, you can download the data in KML format, which then can be opened in Google Earth, or share it with others.

Source:→ Google Blog

Google, Maps, Google Maps, My Maps, API, Google Maps API