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Google Maps -- Organizing the World's Information, Geographically 
With Lars Rasmussen
I will talk about the many pieces of the puzzle comprising Google Maps.
We built, for example, the Google Maps site as a single page consisting almost entirely of JavaScript. (The acronym "AJAX" was later coined to describe this approach.) I will discuss the pros and cons of AJAX, and delve into some particular technical challenges we had to meet.
I will also give a high-level overview of the challenges involved in working with spatial data: making it searchable, routable, and browsable. The field is relatively new to Google, and most of the challenges still lie ahead.
Links
Lars Eilstrup Rasmussen
is a member of Google's technical staff and a
lead engineer of the team that created Google Maps. He currently
manages Google's nascent Sydney engineering office and is actively
working to expand Google's engineering presence in Australia.
Lars holds a Ph.D. in theoretical computer science from the University
of California at Berkeley, which nominated his thesis on approximate
counting for the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award.
In early 2003, Lars co-founded with his brother Jens Eilstrup
Rasmussen a mapping-related startup, Where 2 Technologies, which was
acquired by Google in October of 2004.