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Add Gas Prices, Real Estate, and Other Custom POIs to Google Maps

By Dave Johnson | September 3, 2009
Rick Broida

Rick Broida

Business Hacks

Biography

Rick Broida

Rick Broida
A technology writer for more than 15 years, Rick Broida is a regular contributor to CNET, Popular Science, Wired and other publications. He's also the author of numerous books, including How to Do Everything with Your Zune. When he's not chained to his keyboard, he's usually shooting hoops or watching quality television.

Dave Johnson

Biography

Dave Johnson

Dave Johnson
Over the past 20 years, Dave Johnson has written three dozen books (including the best-selling How to Do Everything with Your Digital Camera), co-hosted a weekly call-in radio show, and covered technology for a long list of magazines that include PC World and Wired. As his neighbors can attest, he also plays drums.

You probably use Google Maps all the time — to find the best route to a business meeting, locate your hotel when you travel, and see if you can identify the car in your personal parking spot. What you might not realize is that you can easily customize Google Maps with lots of data that can help you out here at home or when you’re traveling.

The left pane of Google Maps has an oft-neglected My Maps tab — click it and you’ll get access to pre-made map overlays. One overlay shows the price of gas at stations all over the specified zip code, for example, while another gives you access to current real estate data.  In addition to the typical points of interest style overlays, you can also use some overlays to calculate distances between locations and get precise GPS coordinates.

But why read about it when you can see it in action? Check out the video for the full rundown:

Related Tags Google Inc., Custom Inc., Google Maps, Real Estate, Business Operations, Dave Johnson

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