The world is getting smaller, or at least a little easier to visualize, thanks to some cool new map tools you can add to your website.

Last year Google released an API for Google Maps (that’s application programming interface for you non techno-geeks).  The Maps API allows developers to embed Google Maps into web pages and create their own specialized mapping tools with custom views and locations embedded into the maps.

Frappr

One cool tool based on the Google Maps API is Frappr.  Frappr enables anyone to create a map, customize the locations on the map, and share the map with others who can add additional locations to the map.  Here’s an example of a Frappr map that shows some of the members of the Christian-web-masters.com forums. Note how you can zoom in and recenter the map just like the regular Google Maps and you can mouseover the icons on the map to see details about each location.

In addition to creating a map of site users, there are lots of other possible uses for Frappr in Christian ministry.  Here are just a few. 

• A church could create a map of all their members.
• A church denomination could create a map of all their churches.
• A missionary could create a map of all their supporters.
• A missions organization could create a map of all their missionaries.
• A family could create a map of all their family members.

ClustrMaps

Another cool map tool is ClustrMaps.  ClustrMaps allows you to generate a map of all the visitors to your site by embedding a short snippet of code in your website.  We added ClustrMaps to the Christian Web Trends Blog about a month ago.  If you click on the map at the bottom of the navigation menu and you’ll see a world map with dots representing all the blog visitors from the last month.  It’s pretty cool to see the visitors we’ve had from all over the world.

Have you seen any other cool map tools?  Got other ideas for how to use Frapper?  Have you created your own map tool?  Post a comment about them.

In His Service,
Paul Steinbrueck
OurChurch.Com