Google do it again

From a map of Dublin to … a map of the whole United States. But this one’s Google-style.

http://maps.google.com/ is yet another cool-looking application to come out of Google Labs.

It has a funky real-time dynamic-HTML interface that lets you interactively zoom in and out of maps, drag-scroll using the mouse, and (very cool) do location-sensitive searches.

For example, if I search on ‘pizza in st paul, mn’ Google will jump to the St Paul, Minnesota section of the map and then highlight all the Pizza shops on the map. I can then click on individual jobs for more details, or even get directions there.

Let’s hope this makes it to Ireland someday…

(If you’re interesting in how they implemented the slick user interface, there’s a good analysis here. Also check out this amazing satellite map of Switzerland, which has a similar interface, and this Java-based map of Ireland / Europe.)