Google Maps Builder
I have a really good friend that runs a small travel related blog and she wanted to add Google Maps to her site to go along with her articles, such as this post on LA restaurants. But she is a not a developer and would never ever want to tinker with the necessary JavaScript code used by the Google Maps API. To help in her task of generating custom maps I quickly whipped up Map Builder. Map Builder allows you to zoom in, center, and add any number of markers to a Google Maps canvas. Once you are happy with how a map looks, you can generate the necessary JavaScript code which can be embedded in you website. You do need to sign up for a Google Maps API key before you can display the map on your domain.
On the technical side, I use the Google Geocoder to resolve the longitude and latitude of a given address. Creating a marker for that location is pretty straight forward and there are plenty of examples in the Google Maps documentation. To generate the custom JavaScript source code I used the JavaScript Templates library from the Trimpath project.
Technorati Tags: javascript, js, trimpath, javascript templates, google maps, map builder