WRITTEN ON July 27th, 2005 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Online Maps

You can see on this useful timeline by Eric Baillargeon what has happened since Google maps were launched on 8 Feb. UK hackers are not far off the pace, it seems, eg:

8 Feb 2005 : Launch of Google Maps
9 Feb : Google Maps Reversed Engineered
6 April : Google Maps adds satellite pictures
13 April: Google Maps Mania blog
19 April : Google Maps adds UK
17 may: Chicago Crime Geolocation tool
18 may: Sexual predators list in Florida.
19 may : “OK to hack Google Maps”
25 may: BBC News on Google Maps
31 may: Sport Maps for UK with the BBC Backstage data.
June 5: gTraffic.info for UK.
June 13: US Census over Google Maps = gCensus
June 15: Google Maps UK Datasets! Great integration.
June 21: Google Maps adds satellite images for the rest of the world. Roma Italia.
June 29: Google finally release its API for Google Maps
June 30: US weather over G-Maps
July 8: Iraq Casualties
July 14: Google Maps adds Japan maps and satellite images
July 20: The moon with full cheese detail
July 23: UK weather on Google Maps

Meanwhile Microsoft has launched MSN Virtual Earth. It shows 10 Londons and three Englands, but all are in the US. And its being dissed for still showing the Twin Towers (people are getting well fussy about what they get for free). All this hot geo-gossip thx to Google Maps Mania.