Is it possible to import locations from user-created maps to the google map API?

Question

I'm building a simple appliacation using the Google Maps API and I'm trying to import locations from user-generated maps. You know the ones on maps.google.com where you can add locations and share it with others. I want to display these locations on an external page using the Google Maps API. Is this possible?

As there was no obvious way of sharing map data from the map page itself, I thought maybe I could pull the location data out of the RSS feed. But no luck. It seems this only has the name of the locations and no lat/long data :(

Answer 1

You should definitely be able to get the coordinate data from the MyMaps RSS feed. I haven't been able to confirm this because it looks like the feed stuff on MyMaps is currently broken:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/maps/thread?tid=2fd831d021abeb46&hl=en

I tried a test MyMap feed and found the same problem:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&output=georss&msid=109115301202341389527.00046920ee89136f6e1ab