Finally! Google now lets you embed Google Maps into your own site, and even customize various aspects of them! The way they implemented it isn’t extremely technical...they just use an embeddable frame for you to put on your site. So you’re essentially serving up another website inside your own site.

Yesterday at Where 2.0, Google made the announcement that they were takin’ maps to the streets with their new street view functionality.  This new feature seemed to take all the spotlight and hardly any attention was given to “Mapplets” which was also announced.

There are many people who like Google Maps for mobile devices but have been disappointed that there hasn’t been support for GPS. (Note: the iPhone will not have GPS support. I would have thought that they would include this).  Google recently announced that Google Maps for mobile will in fact finally have support for GPS on certain mobile devices.

While using Google Maps, you’ve probably come across parts of the map that are either blurred, whited out, or pixelized. It’s no mistake, those areas are actually blurred on purpose (most of the time).  They blur out spots on the maps that are considered to be sensitive like military bases, certain government buildings, nuclear power plants, etc.

Google continues to add new features to their map service, and the latest is a “3D” buildings feature which you can find in some of the major cities around the United States and Tokyo, Japan. It’s really more like 2.5D buildings as Google Earth Blog is calling it.

There have been many startup services out there that introduced the concept of creating your own mashups using Google Maps.  One of those mashups that we’ve written about is called “Wayfaring” which was a great way to plan trips, or create a journal of a trip that you already took.

The Windows Live Maps/Virtual Earth team has spent some serious time over the last few weeks implementing new features and changes. One of their latest changes is the addition of Birds Eye Coverage around the world using their Virtual Earth service. 

Google has just added another tool to their Google Maps service which will help you to avoid traffic jams. Now when you go to Google Maps, you’ll notice in the upper left hand corner of the page a “traffic” button.  By clicking that, you’ll see up-to-date traffic conditions. Right now this service is offered for 30 different major U.S. cities.