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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">Holy cow, I'm blown away by this so have to share my excitement with a group that might care……. Google announced support for KML and KMZ in Google Maps today. That's right, Google Maps. See the announcement here: </FONT><A HREF="http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/happy-birthday-google-earth.html"><U><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2006/06/happy-birthday-google-earth.html</FONT></U></A></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">Based on this, I was able to test it out fairly quickly with some code I had previously written for streaming MapGuide Open Source data to Google Earth. It worked pretty well in my initial tests and I am enthused about what this might mean. My previous mashup (</FONT><A HREF="http://mapguide.spatialgis.com/mapguide/GoogleMapsDemo/"><U><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">http://mapguide.spatialgis.com/mapguide/GoogleMapsDemo/</FONT></U></A><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">) of creating Google Maps placemarks as parcel centroids and overlaying WMS polygon boundaries works, but can be slow and client intensive. Using KML may prove to work better.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">To see this in action, open </FONT><A HREF="http://maps.google.com"><U><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">http://maps.google.com</FONT></U></A><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial"> and then copy the following link into the Search field.</FONT>
<BR><A HREF="http://mapguide.spatialgis.com/mapguide/GoogleEarthDemo/GE_Spokane_Parcels.aspx?fileFormat=KML&BBOX=-117.4423,47.665,-117.441,47.666"><U><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">http://mapguide.spatialgis.com/mapguide/GoogleEarthDemo/GE_Spokane_Parcels.aspx?fileFormat=KML&BBOX=-117.4423,47.665,-117.441,47.666</FONT></U></A></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">Some problems I immediately ran into:</FONT>
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<LI><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">The info window formatting is not completely obeyed. For instance, in the KML file the background is bluish with white text. Google Maps renders the background as white.</FONT></LI>
<LI><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">Google Maps detects some errors in the KML file that I will have to sort out.</FONT></LI>
<LI><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">I cannot get KMZ from this code stream to work. Google Maps says that it is not valid yet Google Earth does fine with it. I was able to get KMZ to work with comparable PHP code so I suspect a problem in the .NET ZIP libraries I am using that Google Maps doesn't like. KMZ will be the only way to go in an application like this due to the 10x file size increase of KML.</FONT></LI>
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<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">Also, there are is no API exposure yet, so I believe we are currently stuck with the marker and polygon formatting that Google wants. I hope they eventually add the ability to override these settings.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">All in all, it's pretty cool stuff and I see a lot of potential.</FONT>
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<P><FONT SIZE=1 FACE="Tahoma">Andy Morsell, P.E.</FONT>
<BR><FONT SIZE=1 FACE="Tahoma">Spatial Integrators, Inc.</FONT>
<BR><A HREF="http://www.SpatialGIS.com"><U><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" SIZE=1 FACE="Tahoma">http://www.SpatialGIS.com</FONT></U></A>
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