Mother of all mashups

Welll...maybe not, but surely excellent! Google has done it again. Enabled the right thing at the right place!! Out in the world is "Google Mapplets", a mashup of map based mashups and enabled right alongside google maps, in an unobstrusive way (as always)....there but not there types, invisibly visible.

Google opened up Maps a couple of years back (maybe even less than that) and a lot of interesting and innovative mashups that use this come up every other day .. Eg:- HousingMaps.com, ChicagoCrime.org, GasBuddy.com..Many of these innovative creations haven't been exploited the way they should have been/could've been because of one very obvious reason...They are very useful, but just not popular! Some are quite popular, but a little/lot more popularity won't hurt them :)..Google Mapplets is an excellent way of getting this information to a user's fingertips...

So what are these Mapplets? In Google's words:


Mapplets are mini-webpages that are served inside an IFrame within the Google Maps site. You can put anything inside this mini-webpage that you can put into a normal webpage, including HTML, Javascript, and Flash. Google provides a Javascript API that gives the Mapplet access to services such as manipulating the map, fetching remote content, and storing user preferences.

Google has once again shown us the difference between a good product and a great product...good products are conceptually good, have a lot of potential, show a twist in thought...but great products are all that and add twist to life ... You don't have to think about the most innovative product in this world...to enable access at the right places to innovative creations is by itself quite innovative..

Check out Mapplets for more information..