Today when visiting my favourite little travel planning tool – Google Maps i noticed something a little different. No it wasnt Google Buzz or Google Wave but Google Labs! It was a little potion bottle icon that when clicked displayed the following message:

Google Maps Labs is a testing ground for experimental features that aren’t quite ready for primetime. They may change, break or disappear at any time.

Google Labs - Maps

I thought cool, thanks Google for letting me try out these “experimental” tools!

Let’s go through them:

Drag n Zoom
Pretty simple really, select the drag n zoom tool then drag a rectangle on the map and it will zoom in. What do they say “often the simple ideas are the best” or something? Well this is definitely in the ultra handy category. Being able to browse around a map and then without double clicking or using key shortcuts or the zoom tools i can drag and it will zoom if rather accurately to a more detailed level. How it works out how far to zoom i don’t know but it’s quick and easy.

Aerial Imagery
Again pretty simple more detailed aerial images. Nice but haven’t found any topless girls sunbathing yet.

Where in the world game
Not too shabby. A simple fun game that presents the user with icon located on a map and the user has to guess what country in the world it is. Unfortunately you can select the map view which with a couple of zoom outs gives you the country name if you wanted to cheat.

Rotatable Maps
Handy for more detailed views to see things from another angle.

What’s around here
Shows user content of what is nearby where you are looking. Unfortunately your map gets littered with thousands of little markers so my advice would be to turn it on as needed.

Lat Lng Tool Tip and Lat Lng Marker
Yeah handy to quickly get the latitude and longitude of a place if you need it for other applications but nothing to write home about.

Smart-Zoom
Removes that “We don’t have imagery at this zoom level” message when you zoom too far in. Yawn.

Rating
A good effort by Google and the community of developers. I like little surprises and enhancements as a geek so 3 Plums.

***~~ (3/5)

Related posts:

1. Travelling with Google Maps