Interacting with Commercial Web Services in Novel Ways: Google Maps as an Example of Personalizing Web Services

Besides providing a generic interface for all users, many Web services also provide tools that may be used to both customize the access of the Web services and allow interfacing with programming on the client machine. This article presents three examples of accessing Google Maps to meet a customized need. These examples provide an introduction to customizing Google Maps. At the same time, the techniques used provide an introduction to customizing data, which is a step in developing mashups.