The newly launched Google Maps Engine Lite (beta) is touted as an upgrade to the popular My Maps, but it is not a data journalism tool I want to recommend for digital news reporting and classroom teaching – at least not for now. It has a good concept, but lacks interactive features, has a buggy workflow, and doesn’t function well.
The popular My Maps is functional with a few issues
Here’s a sample map showing five universities in Pennsylvania that have a digital journalism program. Each university is marked on the map with a placemark; clicking on a placemark you will see a brief introduction of the program, links to the program web page, as well as a related image or video. (See a separate post for more about digital journalism programs in U.S.)
Although satisfied with its overall functions, I have had some complaints about My Maps: 1). by default, the placemark window has labels such as “Directions,” “Search nearby,” “Save to map,” etc; they look too amateurish and I want the window to be “cleaner.” 2). data entering/managing can be improved; you need to manually enter information for each placemark.
Maps Engine Lite has a good concept but lacks in feature and execution
Words were spreading this week about the new Google Maps Engine Lite which, according to Google, will replace My Maps. Two features of the new tool caught my eyes: a neat placemark window without those My Maps-style labels; data entry is done with a spreadsheet, and data management makes use of a table.
I took the plunge and tried to replicate the above My Maps map using Maps Engine Lite. After a few hours of going through the tutorial and learning by trial and error, I finally put together a Maps Engine Lite, but I was both frustrated and disappointed:
- The embedded map does not work properly. In the embedded map below, when clicking on a placemark, only the top portion of the pop-up window is visible. I couldn’t figure out how to fix it.
- In the actual, standalone map, there is not any support for interactive features: I was not able to embed image or video, and I could not add a link either.
- It would skip entries with an address that it has trouble with – without letting you know of the omission. The address for Messiah College, the one I found on their website, is “1 College Ave, Mechanicsburg, PA 17055”. In the Excel spreadsheet, I entered this address in the Location column for Messiah College. When the spreadsheet was imported to the map, Messiah College simply disappeared (That’s why you only see four schools in the map below). Turns out Google Maps has trouble locating this address on the map.
- The workflow is buggy. When I make changes to the titles, the map does not refresh to show the change/edits, I need to reload the page to see titles updated. There is not a “save” button, and I was always in doubt if the edits are saved. There are a few other minor but annoying bugs with the interface.
Related posts:
7 Responses to Google Maps Engine Lite (beta) Review: It can use a lot of improvements