From there, you can either save the directions to an existing map, or create a new one. Then, it takes you to the My Maps editor where you can edit the saved placemarks and route, and also add new places and details as you wish.

"You’ve probably been there: a friend asks you for directions to your house for a party, or to that nice picnic spot you recommended, so you try to scribble some lines on the back of a napkin or you try to explain out loud that they should take the second (or is it the third?) left," says Taj Campbell at Google’s Lat Long Blog. "It’s particularly a pain when you want to tell a bunch of people – like your entire housewarming guest list – directions."

Another new tool lets you draw lines along roads to illustrate how to get from one point to another. To use this, just go to the drop-down menu in the line tool by clicking and holding briefly on the button.

This tool calculates the best driving route and snaps the line you created to said route. You can then save this as well.

These features can certainly be useful for sharing directions with friends, and can be a fantastic element within Google’s social network, that you don’t really see with others.

The feature isn’t in place for everything at this point, but Google provides some examples like Google Maps searches for "President Birth Places," "London Olympics 2012," "US State Capitals," and others.

 

"In addition to making searching better, this is also an excuse for you to go polish your maps, since now the world can find them!" says James Macgill at the Google Lat Long Blog. "Remember, if we find an attribution in your feed we will link back to you."

In other news, Frank Taylor at the unofficial Google Earth Blog has posted a couple interesting items. The first is a how-to video on using Street View in Google Earth:

He also looks at how to set up Google Earth Options. "If you’re wondering what Google Earth experts do to make things run faster or better, then read this article," he says. Check it out here.

“This isn’t your grandfather’s Google maps mashup,” wrote Adam Healey, VibeAgent’s cofounder and CEO, on the corporate blog.  “It’s fun.  It’s powerful.”  And – in a way that meshes nicely with “powerful” – it’s pretty versatile.

“You can read user profiles, hotel reviews, and group descriptions, or browse hotel photos all without leaving your map,” according to Healey.  “You can zoom into a geography of interest and see who in your network has stayed there, and what they have to say about it.  You can quickly jump to a friend’s map and see what’s brewing in their network.  You can visit your Scuba group and see where they recommend staying on the Red Sea, or hop over to your Beaches group and see what they like in the Caribbean.”

Mashable’s Kristen Nicole has screenshots of My Maps in action; a system of tabs keeps things from getting too cluttered, and some elements (such as the “My News” feed) are even reminiscent of the ever-popular Facebook.  Combined with Google’s Maps, that’s a mixture that’s hard to beat.

And so it’s only natural that VibeAgent is close to winning.  Nicole notes “the company’s announcement that it has reportedly climbed the ranks to become the 5th largest hotel site in the world,” and continues, “This may sound somewhat surprising, considering that VibeAgent has yet to launch, and is still in private beta, but this is largely due to VibeAgent’s new partners, OneTravel and TravelWorm. . . .  This increases the number of hotels in VibeAgent’s database to 120,000+, offering more resources for users to gather information from.”

Sounds impressive; it should be interesting to see what else VibeAgent accomplishes in the time before its launch.

Google Gets Personal With My Maps

Users will have the option of sharing the maps they create with friends by putting a maps URL in their browser navigation bar and sending it in an email or adding it to a blog or Web site.

My Maps also allows users to make their charts public or unlisted. Unlisted maps will not be searchable but public maps will be listed in the search results on Google Maps and Earth. Public maps will be listed in Google’s index in two to six weeks.

 Descriptions of map items will automatically appear in text but users have the option of using rich text or HTML.

Users will also be able to add photos to their maps if they are hosted online. Along with photos users can add Google Video or YouTube videos to their maps.

Over at the Google Earth Blog Frank Taylor offered his thoughts on My Maps. "Using KML underneath is a fantastic move."

"It means all content is easily available not only to Google Maps, and Google Earth – but also to any other mapping or virtual globe application, which supports KML. You can also load KML files into Google Maps (just put the URL to a KML file into the Maps search)."

Pete Cashmore at Mashable expressed concern that Google’s launch of My Maps would kill off other smaller mapping sites.

"It’s a shame that Google would launch such a product: startups like Platial and Frappr, not to mention thousands of smaller sites, have built businesses around social maps (provided by Google Maps, Yahoo Maps or both). By providing its own service, Google has instantly killed off at least a few hundred of those mashed-up tools."