The Google Maps service just recently got a ‘labs’ section, much like Gmail and other Google Services. Along with the introduction of labs to their maps offerings, Google has released a collection of nine innovative labs features the Google maps service.

All nine labs features are available to try but are disabled by default as there are still beta services.

An overview of the new labs offerings for Google Maps:
Smart Zoom - Prevents a user from zooming in too close where no images are available for the zoom level
Drag ‘n’ Zoom - Provides a smarter method of zooming into specific areas of a map by dragging a square with your mouse which will then cause the map viewer to resize and zoom into that area
Rotatable Maps - Adds the ability to rotate the orientation of the map
Aerial Imagery – Enables high resolution aerial photography overlays
Back to Beta - This feature adds a beta label to the Google Maps logo, Most definitely for the Google hard core fans.
LatLng Marker – Add latitude and longitude markers
LatLng Tooltip – Display the pointer’s latitude and longitude
Where in the World Game – Play a game that test’s your geographical knowledge of the world
What’s Around Here - A secondary search result that enables you to perform searched within searches or searches of search results. Useful for searching within a specific area

Tags: Beta, Browser, Experimental, Google, Interface, Internet, Web

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 at 14:53 and is filed under Web. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.