Well, Google finally improved their 3 year old Google Map images for the Riviera Maya, as well as added 54 new countries. I guess the Earth must have shifted a bit since they last photographed the area — all of my custom street map images no longer lined up!

Unfortunately, whatever day the aerial view images were taken, there were some serious clouds hanging over Playa del Carmen’s downtown area. Nonetheless, the new map images appear much clearer than the old ones. Plus, they provide great views of the two brand new shopping centers built here in the last year (Centro Maya and Plaza Las Americas). All in all, I think I like images.

I have regenerated my map images and re-geo-coded all my locations over at In The Roo, my interactive map of Playa del Carmen. If you haven’t been there in a while, please click on over. My street map coverage has been extended and I’ve also added many little tweaks here and there.

During my free time, I’ve been spending some time getting to know the Google Gadgets and Google Maps API. I’ve decided that I needed to start putting this knowledge to use, and therefore decided to finally get started working on one of my pet projects.

According to the Guinness Book of Records, Playa del Carmen is currently the world’s fastest growing town (by a rate of 26 percent per annum). Paper maps of streets, restaurants, bars and hotels in the area are outdated long before they hit the tourists. And, unfortunately, this area (by area, I mean Mexico) does not yet have a wonderful resource like Yahoo! Yellow Pages to easily find and display this information.

So, when I’m out taking my frequent walks, I’m going to try and take my handy Garmin GPS unit with me and try to start plotting some of the area’s attractions. Who knows, maybe one of these days Google or Yahoo! will wake up and realize that Mexico needs this type of service as well, and they’ll pay me lots of money to provide them with the data I’ve collected.

Currently, my work in progress demonstrates how to add custom overlays (street names) on the satellite images of the area. This is where the I’ve spent a bulk of my time thus far (it’s isn’t obvious yet!), since Google has made it a painstaking process to piece together the image tiles and make a map to work with.

Another piece of my project is the use of markers. I’ve added some markers showing some bars, restaurants and hotels. In the future, I hope to use different colored markers for each attraction, and possibly toggle the display based on user preferences.

I’d like to discuss my accomplishments and hurdles, but it’s late. I’ll hopefully get around to that in future installments. Until then, check out my progress at In The Roo Google Map – Playa del Carmen.