Google has just released a preview of Mapplets, essentially gadgets for their maps. In practical terms it allows me to see Google trends on a map, check local gas prices, consume georss feeds, or see a heatmap visualization of Zuerich Travel times.

They can be found at http://maps.google.com/preview. You can find about 30 Mapplets to add via their content directory.

So what are Mapplets? Google explains:

Mapplets are mini-webpages that are served inside an IFrame within the Google Maps site. You can put anything inside this mini-webpage that you can put into a normal webpage, including HTML, Javascript, and Flash. Google provides a Javascript API that gives the Mapplet access to services such as manipulating the map, fetching remote content, and storing user preferences.

They have also proposed some changes to KML and ATOM that would support attribution to authors and a return URL for the content hosters. Right now. You can see an example here.

This is making Google Maps a mashup platform, but they know that they don’t want to be the only data provider or the only mashup. That’s why the attribution is so important. Most mashups are fighting to be found. Google is now providing them yet another way to do that.

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Yesterday a new class had been added to Google AJAX Feed API. Its designed to allow you to more easily add a collection of feeds to your pages. The FeedControl is pretty simple:

“var feedControl = new google.feeds.FeedControl();
feedControl.addFeed(“http://www.digg.com/rss/index.xml”, “Digg”);
feedControl.addFeed(“http://feeds.feedburner.com/Techcrunch”, “TechCrunch”);
feedControl.draw(document.getElementById(“feedControl”));“

In addition to the formal documentation, they have put together a few samples to help you quickly come up to speed.

• Basic FeedControl – feedcontrol.html
• Tabbed FeedControl – tabbed.html
• Sidebar Style FeedControl – sidebar.html
• AJAX Feed API Playground Blog

Yesturdayat the Emetrics Summit in San Francisco, Brett Crosby and Jeff Veen unveiled the new version of Google Analytics. They would be activating this new version on all current Analytics accounts over the next few weeks.

What’s different?
We’ve redesigned the reporting interface for greater customization and collaboration. This should make it easier for businesses and website owners to find and share the data you need to make informed decisions. The new version presents data more clearly and in context, so you can look at a single report to gain insights rather than having to pull up several reports to understand what action to take.

The admin settings and the actual data collected are not changing except for a few improvements detailed on this FAQ page, so it shouldn’t take you long to get used to the new interface. We hope that you’ll find Google Analytics more accessible and useful for your business or site. Here are some of the improvements:

* Email and export reports: Schedule or send ad-hoc personalized report emails and export reports in PDF format.
* Custom Dashboard: No more digging through reports. Put all the information you need on a custom dashboard that you can email to others.
* Trend and Over-time Graph: Compare time periods and select date ranges without losing sight of long term trends.
* Contextual help tips: Context sensitive Help and Conversion University tips are available from every report.

Why did we develop this new version?
Since Google Analytics launched in November 2005, the demand for website analytics has increased significantly. Today there are hundreds of thousands of Google Analytics customers, and web analytics has moved from being a niche function to becoming a mainstream aspect of the business for companies of all sizes. You’ve asked that we focus our engineering efforts around maintaining the sophistication and features that experienced users want, while also making it easy for both experts and non-experts to quickly and easily find the answers you want.

For a smooth transition, here are a few helpful resources specific to the new version:

* Take a tour of the new version
* Report Finder Tool: will help you see where data from the previous interface is located within the new version (it is also linked to from within your reports on the left navigation menu)
* FAQs for more details about the new version
* New version features page

Here is a list of useful links:
Google Analytics Blog
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