What You Need to Use This Book
For the Google Maps examples in this book, you need access to a publicly available web site
where you can add and update pages, because the Google Maps API must be able to verify
your pages during use. Hosting these pages on your own machine is unlikely to work. Full
details of requirements, including those for accessing the Google Maps API are provided in
Chapter 3.Google Maps applications are written using JavaScript and HTML, so you should be familiar
with these to be able to understand and adapt the examples. Many of the examples use a Perl
script for providing data, and although these operations could also be written in PHP or
Python, examples of these are not provided. Finally, some examples use a MySQL database to
store information. A similar database solution, such as MySQL, Derby, PostgreSQL, or others
will be required to duplicate some of the samples. All of the examples should work within the
major platforms (Windows, Linux/Unix, and Mac OS X).All of the examples in this book make use of the version 1 sequence of the Google Maps API.
The API is under constant development and new versions might be released after the publica-
tion of this book that supersede the version used in the examples. The availability of the new
version will not affect the operation of the examples, which are designed to work with the v1
sequence.The Google Earth application is available for computers running Windows and Mac OS X.
However, new versions and editions for existing and new platforms could be released at any
time.What’s on the Companion Web Site
A companion site for the book is available at http://maps.mcslp.com.The site includes the following:Full source code for all the examples in the book.
Working examples of all the applications featured in the book.Errata and corrections.
Regular follow-up articles and information on Google Maps, Google Earth, and the
book contents.The web site also includes a Weblog. Details of how to subscribe to the articles and comments
posted to the blog are available on the site.As usual, all of the code and errata for the book are also available at http://www.wiley
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