There are two big reasons for the decrease. The first one is that I’m writing a book about the Google Maps API 3 that will be published in August this year. All the spare time I have is spent writing the book. It’s a much more time consuming endeavor than I first anticipated, but now the writing is progressing really well and the book will hopefully be published on time.

The second reason, and the biggest one, is that I’ve become a dad. We had a son in January this year and that’s certainly a life-changing experience. It’s so much fun, but at the same time very time consuming. Fortunately he’s kind enough to let his parents sleep most of the nights, otherwise I don’t know if I would have managed to write the book at the same time.

So that’s the reasons for not posting a lot of articles nowadays. Hopefully when the book is finished I will get back to posting regularly again, event if it’s probably going to be a little less often than before.

I haven’t written a book before so this is new territory for me. What I’ve noticed so far is that it progresses far slower than I predicted, but at least it progresses steadily even if slower than anticipated. I’ve taken a few weeks off of my regular work to devote to writing this book but this time won’t suffice, so there will probably be quite a few late nights and weekends of writing as well.

About the book

The book will mainly be about how to use the recently released Google Maps API V3. This new API introduces a whole lot of changes compared to the old one (V2) and this book is meant to explain the differences and to guide you into this new way of using it. Of course if you never used the API this book is for you as well. It will provide you with the skills and knowledge necessary to develop great maps.

The main target audience of the book are:

• Webdesigners that have some basic knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
• Developers that quickly wants to transfer from the the old API to the new.
• Other people interested in incorporating Google Map in their web pages.

The book will deal with the basics of creating maps as well as some advanced topics such as how to deal with large amounts of markers. It will also promote best practices for both HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The book will be filled with code examples that will teach you how things work and that you can start using right away in your own web applications.

As of now I don’t know in which form this book will be published, but I’ll keep you informed as things progress.

If you have a request for something that you want me to include in the book, or any thoughts or questions about it, please contact me in the comments or through the Contact page.

Update: If you want a sneak peek of the book, I have published a beta chapter about Markers called X Marks the spot.

Stay posted

If you want to stay updated with the progress of the book, sign up below.

And just for the record, your email address is safe with me. I will use it for this purpose only. I hate spam as much as you do!

You should also follow me on twitter.

That also means that I’m not going to write any articles or answer any comments this week, but I’ll be back again after Christmas with lots of new article ideas.

Ski map of Åre, courtesy of www.skimap.info.

View from the hills of Åre. Photo by: december_snowdrift

Happy holidays everyone, I hope you have a good one!

My vacation have been really great. Me and my girlfriend started of with a week of hiking in the mountains in the north of Sweden in a national park called Padjelanta. The nature there is stunning. Sometimes we had to stop just to look at the amazing scenery around us.

After our hike we rented a car and drove up to the North Cape. I’ve heard that the view from there is spectacular. Unfortunately it was raining and also very foggy when we where there so we didn’t see much. But luckily we could see it all on a movie that was shown at the gigantic tourist complex situated on the top of the cliff(!).

One of the things I was hoping to do in Norway was to go on a whale safari. It didn’t look too good for a while since the weather was bad but fortunately the crew on the safari boat decided that the weather was good enough and we got out into the ocean searching for whales. During six hours of pretty rough sea, we got to see a Sperm whale for two minutes. It was pretty cool to watch it blow water from it’s nose and to watch it’s big back rise and descend into the ocean. After a while it got bored and waived goodbye with it’s back fin and disappeared down in the blue. Although I had hoped to see more whales I’m glad that I at least saw one. And I must say that they are truly impressive animals!

Anyway it feels good to be back home again and I look forward to write many articles and work on interesting projects this fall. I hope you too have had a nice holiday and are ready to get back in business again.

During this time I won’t be blogging so it’s going to be kind of quiet around here. But I’ll be back again by the second week of August.

I hope you all have a nice summer and are taking the time to relax and doing something fun.

Until the beginning of August, cheers!