Really it would be very interesting to think about our school days when we learned to locate important cities, rivers and mountains in a country's map or a world map. Maps are the things that have been mingled in our life nowadays. We can learn about any country or state, before visiting there, with the help of a map. In this computer world our Google has done a great work, with the support of NASA, called 'Google Maps' by which we can see not only the maps of various parts of the world and also of our own living town and street. Even we can locate our house in that map. Depending upon your location you can see basic map or a customized map. Besides tourist and geographical informations of a particular location, we can also gather business details of the same. If you are doing a business, you can help your customers with the help of Google Maps. For this you have to open the link, local business centre, to create your free listing. When the customers search for the information, they will find your business with other details such as working hours even the photos of your office. We can also get contact informations and driving directions from google maps.

Google afford a great chance of creating my maps account to every Gmail account holder. This will be really interesting to collect the maps of our favorite places particularly for those who have great involvement in this subject. As I am from South India, I have added maps of some important places of South India in my Google Maps account. Few days back I published a blog in which six of the maps have been posted. The blog name is ratnaveera maps. In that site we can see the maps of Cape comorin, Madurai, Ooty, Cochin, Bangalore and Chennai.

It is my pleasure to share with all of you my Google Maps experiences. I would like to present this Hub as a complete guide for 'My Maps-Google'.

You need a Gmail Account

To create your My Maps account, first of all you need to open a gmail account. It hardly needs 5 minutes to open it. After successfully creating your gmail account, open the site http://maps.google.com/. There you can search any map and enjoy it though you are not having a gmail account. But to create and edit your maps you need an account and have to sign in with the same details that you use for your gmail account. After signing in you are welcome to your My Maps account.

Searching your Maps

You can create and edit the maps of important villages,towns and cities which are already known by the Google and add it to your account. If you want to create and edit the map of your favorite place or village that's unknown by Google, firstly try to search the map of an important town ( known by google ) which is nearby to your place or village. After getting the map of nearby town, you can easily locate the map of your favorite place or village by dragging or panning the map. Sometimes you need to zoom out the map to find out your favorite place. After getting your favorite place or village, you can make it known to the world in a few minutes with the help of Google.

Navigating your Maps

In the search field enter the name of your favorite location, state and also of the country, importantly with out spelling errors, at once you click on the search tab you will get either road map or satellite map of the location.

On the right panel where the map appears you can see various tabs such as road map, satellite and terrain. To get the satellite view of the map, click on satellite tab. To get a closer watch of your place, you should not immediately increase the zoom level points in the zoom tool that appears on the left side of the map. If you increase the zoom points or zoom in step by step, you can easily locate the correct point in your map.

You can click + key for zoom in and - for zoom out . In the other method, place the crusor at a particular point and use the scroll button of the mouse to zoom in or zoom out. You can also double click a point to make it centre and zoom in.

To view the adjacent parts of the map you can do any one of the following.

1. Click on the map and drag it constantly by pressing the left side button of the mouse. You can do this in any direction to view the adjacent parts of the map.

2. There are four arrow marks just on the left side of the map. Click on the up arrow mark to move map north and down one to move it south. Similarly click on the left side arrow to move west and right side arrow to east.

3. You can also use key board arrows to drag the map. When you press up arrow you can move map north and when press down arrow you can move the map south. When you press left side arrow of the key board you can drag the map west and when press right side arrow it moves east.

There is a blue colored little arrow mark on the left side of the map. If you click on the arrow mark, you will get full length of the map and if you press F 11, you will get maximum size of the map.

Editing your Map

On the left side of the map you can find two tabs, 'search results' and 'my maps'. To start editing your map click on the tab 'my maps' and then you click on 'create a new map'. Now you get a untitle box and a description box at the left bottom of the page. Type the name of place which you want to edit carefully without spelling errors and also give a short desription about that particular place. You can now start editing the existing map by using various tools that appear on the tool bar namely Place mark, Line, Shape. Remember that these tools won't appear if you did n't click edit or 'create a new map'.

Adding and Editing Placemarks

After getting your map, click on the placemark tool and drag it with out pressing the left side button of the mouse and put it exactly on the point of map which you want to describe about. After placing the mark click on it to open 'info window'. There you can enter the title of the appropriate place and a short description. After that click OK to save your work. If you want to delete the place mark, put the crusor on it and give a right click to get many options including delete. You can also change the style and color of the place mark by clicking on the right corner of the info window where you have many options.

Adding and Editing Lines

To add a line in your map, click on the appropriate tool which is next to placemark icon and move it to the appropriate location and click to start the line. Click on the each part of the line you want to make on the map and give double click to finish the line. After finishing the line click on it to open 'info window'. There you can enter the title of the appropriate place and a short description. After that click OK to save your work. If you want to delete the line, put the crusor on it and give a right click to get many options including delete. You can also change style and color of the line by clicking on the right corner of the info window where you can get many options.

Adding and Editing Shapes

To add a shape in your map, click on the appropriate tool which is next to line icon and move it to the appropriate location and add it. After adding the shape click on it to open 'info window'. There you can enter the title of the appropriate place and a short description. After that click OK to save your work. If you want to delete the shape, put the crusor on it and give a right click to get many options including delete. You can also change style and color and opacity of the shape by clicking on the right corner of the info window where you can get many options.

Adding Rich Text and HTML descriptions

When you start to enter the title and description of a particular place after clicking on the placemark or line or shape, you will get three optins of editing such as Plain text,Rich Text and HTML descriptions. You can change the color, font and style of the text by selecting Rich text. You can enter HTML descriptions by selecting add HTML. However some HTML codes will be stipped off if they are found unsafe.

Getting directions

Depending upon your location you can get directions from one location to another.Usually the directions will appear in blue lines. To get directions for your map do any one of the following. In search field enter the name of locations as follows from:x, to:y. Here x and y are the names of different locations. Secondly click 'get directions' and enter starting and ending locations and click. YOU can also get directions by right clicking on the map.

Adding Photos to your Maps

You can also add your photos to your maps as long as they are hosted online. Please use a service such as google picasaweb to add your photos online. To add photos to your maps click an appropriate placemark and then rich text option in it. Select the photo icon which one is at the right end and click it to enter the url of the photo. Now click OK to save your photo.

Adding Videos to your Maps

To add videos, click an appropriate placemark and info window appears. Click edit and then edit HTML option. Find the video that you want on You Tube or Google Video. Copy the snippet of code that lets you embed the video into a website or blog. Paste the code in the description field of the placemark and click OK to save your change.

The Locations that can be added to your Maps

You may be living in a village nearby an important town of your country. If you are sure about the correct location of your village, which you could see through the Google Map, you can add it to your map account by clicking 'create a new map' to start editing and saving. In a few minutes you can make any one in the world to see your edited map and your description about the location. But one important thing to note is that searcher should use the correct spelling and title which you used to add the placemark. You can also mark important points of your city or town such as parks, temples,schools, churches and etc.,Besides these you can also you also add your business location and details in your maps.If you are doing a real estate business you can put full details of your business with map. You can also add your other business locations in your map. It is better to avoid the marking of your own house and properties.

Saving search results to your map

You can search for address and business and save items from your search results to your map. For this you have to do following things 1. Open a Map. 2. Search for the business or address that you want to add. 3. Click on the item you want to save. Click save to my maps and finish the work.

Enjoy seeing our own created Maps

To find our own created maps, first we have to sign in the site http://maps.google.com. Click on the 'My Maps' tab that you can find on the left panel. Now you can get a list of maps that you have already created and edited. Select your favorite map by clicking on it. If you need further edition click edit tab and start editing. If you want to delete any map you can simply click on the into mark appears right to the name of the each map in the list.

Enjoy seeing others maps

When you want to enjoy the maps created by other users you just click on any of the placemark that appears on the map. Then click on the link that may appear in the info window to get the profile of other users.

Collaborating with others

Once you have created and edited your map, you can invite individuals or any one to collaborate on editing your map. For this click collaborate tab that apears on the left panel. A dialog box appears.

Enter or choose the following

Invite persons as collaborators

Enter the email address of any one you want to collaborate on your map.

Message

Type the message you want to appear in the invitation to your collaborators.

Collaborators may invite others

Check this to allow your collaborators to invite other collaborators.

Allow any one to edit this map

Check this to enable any google user to edit your map.

Collaborators

You can remove any or all collaborators.

Finally click OK.

Google will send invitations to your collaborators after seeing your options.

Sharing your maps with friends and public

If you want to see your edited placemark in the public view, you have to enter the following things in the search field.

1. The title of the placemark that you have entered

2. The name of your favorite place or town or city.

3. The name of your Stae and also of the country ( if needed )

For eg. If you enter ' The Pupil Tree, Kambam, Tamil Nadu ' in your search field you will get the map of our native place and see the Pupil Tree which is the central attraction of the town.

If you want to share your map experiences personally you can send the url of the map that appears when you click the link 'link to this page'. You can also post your personalized map in your blog, as I have done in my blog titled ratnaveera maps, by getting the embedded codes by clicking on ' link to this page and then on 'customize and preview embedded map'. The preview of the map will appear in a new window where you can choose the size of the map. Here you have to adjust your desired and appropriate zoom level of the map which will appear in your blog. Then you need to copy the codes below the map to paste in your blog and publish.