USAToday: Multiple mash-ups ensue as Google Maps mate with Net info

Kevin Maney has written up a great article about the Google Maps craze which ran yesterday in the U.S. national newspaper, USAToday:

Multiple mash-ups ensue as Google Maps mate with Net info
By: Kevin Maney Posted 8/16/2005 10:16 PM

One map on the Internet is a Hummer owner's dream: It plots the day's cheapest gas stations anywhere in the USA. Another shows single women looking for dates in any San Francisco neighborhood.

Another online map plots where every injury occurred along this year's route for the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. That way you can see, for example, that Jesus Angel Marino, 48, got horned not far from where a bull also stuck it to a local policeman.

Who'd have thought that the ubiquitous old Internet maps would become one of the Internet's coolest new tricks? Not long ago, that would've seemed as unlikely as a Paul Anka comeback.

But about a month ago, Google opened to the public a set of programming interfaces (called APIs) for its Google Maps. That means that anybody can take a set of data from one Web site and latch it onto Google Maps, creating something new. In the highly technical language of the propeller-head community, this is called a mash-up. (Read the entire article..)