Web Things, by Mark Baker

I can’t recall where I found this, but here’s a really brain-dead simple interface to Google Maps (details here).

What this is, is a microformat-style, HTML-based declarative front-end onto Google Maps. Check out this sample code for placing labelled markers;

<div class="GMapEZ GSmallMapControl GSmallMapTypeControl"
    style="width: 300px; height: 300px;">
  <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=41.092104,-85.144740&spn=0.006130,0.009795&t=k&hl=en">
    A

  </a>
  <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=40.755580,-73.937988&spn=6.276505,5.552490&hl=en">
    B
  </a>
  <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=41.877741,-87.637939&spn=6.169597,5.552490&hl=en">

    C
  </a>
  <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=33.916013,-118.179932&spn=6.874500,5.552490&hl=en">
    D
  </a>

</div>

So the labels become the content of the anchor element. Neat. A better microformat design might have been to use “ol” (ordered list) with some styling (“list-style-type: upper-alpha”) to get the incrementing-letter result (at least for that simple case). And I’m not sure the G* “controls” really fit best in “class” (though nothing better comes to mind – hmm, what’s good for annotation-like semantics?). But this is definitely in the spirit of microformats (even if the word isn’t mentioned), and very well done.

This approach is going to be huge.