“Starting today, when obtaining a link to a Google Map using the ‘Link’ button on the upper right-hand corner of the page, you now have the option of obtaining a convenient, shortened link by clicking on the ‘Short URL’ check box. Shortened URLs can make it easier to coordinate events and share maps with your friends.”

This is great news. Sharing links on Google Maps has always cause problems with Instant Messengers and Mail applications having trouble interpreting the URL. Not to mention SMS character limits. Very glad to see this update.

/via Google LatLong: Just a Short URL away.

We’ll be heading to Ireland in a few months. According to these two screenshots from Google Maps Ireland is ready for our arrival.

Turn up your speakers for this one folks. My friend Eric Brophy and I (more him than me) have a chat about geocoding, mashups, Twitter, and the potential for other geocoded things to pop up in the future.

You can pretty much expect First initial, last name to be 85% geo in 2010.

No question this time around… simply sound off in the comments.

The most notable updates about version 2.2, for me, are:

• Walking directions in Google Maps – Although I use the driving directions in Google Maps as much as any feature on the iPhone, I’ve found myself wanting more accurate walking directions when visiting bigger cities.
• Podcasts are downloadable in iTunes – I’m not sure how often I’ll use this feature since I sync my phone every day to get the latest content from my computer to the iPhone. I’m hoping moreso that the iPhone now displays Podcasts in reverse-chronological order.
• Display the address of a pin – Another update to Google Maps that I’ve wanted to see since day one. When you drop a pin on the map, you can now see the street address of that pin.
• And last… updates to Mobile Safari.  Any updates to Mobile Safari are good updates.

There is one feature I’m leaving out because I would have loved to see it done a bit differently. In Google Maps you can now share your location via email. Google Maps will now construct an iPhone friendly URL and email it to anyone of your choice. This is an excellent update and I’m sure many will use it. But I would rather have seen Google Maps send the URL via SMS. Someone get on that, will ya?

Oh, and Google Maps has Street View too now. I have no idea why I’d ever use this. But, who knows.

Source: Apple – iPhone – Software update.

I have a goal to get to London next year, so this list will come in handy when that happens. For that reason, and because I think everyone visiting London should take a look at this, I’m sharing it here.

Simon Willison put this Google Map together and I think it is a fantastic list of places to see.

Source: Places to see in London (for geeks). (Opens a Google Map.)
Via: Simon Willison on his blog.

The image above is, supposedly, the longest set of driving directions that you can find on Google Maps.  Some guy named Alan Taylor has taken the time to figure this out, and although you could custom drag a longer set of driving directions, he’s pretty sure this is the farthest one.

While other countries, and drivable continents, do exist – Google Maps will not show you the driving directions in these areas.  Otherwise I’m pretty sure a trip across Asia could make the above set of directions like a weekend trip.

Pretty cool.

Source: KOKOGIAK – Google Maps – Long Drives.
View map: On Google Maps.
Via Jason Kottke. 

Web applications are different then the applications you run on your computer in two very specific and obvious ways. First, they are run completely in your web browser (Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer, etc.) and you do not need to download or install any local files for the application to function. Second, the data that the application stores or edits is not on your local machine but rather saved “on the Internet”. These may seem like very obvious differences but I’ve mentioned these two reasons because the paradigm has shifted overtime and Google Gears almost completes that shift.

One of the many mantras of “Web 2.0″ applications has been to freely allow users of these applications to have access to their data both via an API and being able to “export” their data into various formats. These APIs afforded many developers to blur the line between desktop and web applications – such as being able to geotag your photos in iPhoto using Google Maps – but these solutions still required an Internet connection for them to work properly. Something also to note is the fact that these APIs are mainly used by developers and not by the users themselves so even though the data was portable, this fact hasn’t been exploited by the average user much, yet.

Enter Google Gears – which provides developers with the needed technology to make their entire applications portable not just the data. The first example Google chose to show off Gears with is Google Reader (a really great example). Google Reader, up until a few days ago, was a way to read your favorite sites by subscribing to their feeds but its use was limited to when you were connected to the Internet. Google Gears allows you to use Google Reader, at least most of the application, offline. You connect to the Internet, download your latest feed subscription’s updates, get offline, and you’re still able to read the feeds that you’ve cached on your local system. What’s more is that you are able to flag those items and Google Reader will sync with your Google Reader account once an Internet connection is available.

In short; Google Gears brings your favorite web applications to your local computer and allows them to run almost like desktop applications.

Why am I excited? Because my main reason for not using some of the most popular web applications has been because I can not use them offline. I am a firm believer in having all of my data available to me at anytime. Unfortunately in some cases, such as my photo and music libraries becoming larger than my laptop’s hard drive, I’ve had to make sacrifices. However, when it comes to much smaller yet more important pieces of data such as email messages, bookmarks, and important documents I can not afford to make those sacrifices. As Google Gears is adopted and implemented in more web applications I’ll be able to begin using them offline.