I just came across a Google Maps hack that geocodes the home towns of Iraq war casualties and displays a visual timeline of the progression of U.S. soldier casualties throughout the war.

This is the most recent in a whole slew of Google Maps hacks, where the service has been tweaked and augmented to map things such as housing, cheap gas, crime occurances in chicago, and sexual predators in Florida.

Barb Dybwad put together a nice howto for using Google Maps to create your own annotated maps. If you want to dig a little deeper, you can check out the work being done to disect the more dynamic aspects of the maps code. There is an initial reference for the various javascript classes and functions, and a howto for embedding map data into your own page.

There's a lot of creative stuff happening here. Make sure to post your favorite map hacks in the comments area, or send me a tip!

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