Google Maps can be used for much more than geography. Google Maps Mania shows off how designers have used the application to create easy-to-browse portfolios. This is done by replacing the map tiles with one’s own image tiles. (The post suggests CASA’s Image Cutter or Automatic Tile Cutter for creating tiles).
Google Maps Mania gives a nice nod to the gaming community for paving ground here by replacing tilesets with maps of the online worlds in which they spend their time (synthetic community journalism?). Designers are now figuring this out and it’d be nice to see what journalists can do with it. With newspaper archival in mind this week, an obvious crossover is a microfiche-style conversion of the day’s paper. However, far more creative uses seem possible.