Since its launch a little less than three months ago, Google Maps has generated more buzz than any other mapping site since I’ve been paying attention to them. Adding satellite photos only made it worse. That buzz can be measured by the number of web sites that chronicle Google Maps, link to its results, or hack its data. Many of them I’ve already reported on here. But brace yourself: I’ve got a whole bunch more for you.

Blogs: Google Maps Mania is wholly dedicated to all things Google Maps; it’s very broad and very thorough, and I expect to be stealing links from referring to it often. Several other blogs use Google’s satellite photos: As Good As Being There uses them to illustrate its posts about various landmarks; for Scavengeroogle, the photos are the basis for a scavenger hunt where you guess the location from the photo. Through the Keyhole, on the other hand, is systematically posting satellite photos from each state, one state per week, in alphabetical order (up to Alaska so far).

Links: Being able to link easily and directly to a specific location is one of Google Maps’s strengths. Two sites make use of that, and have built substantial directories of links: Google Globetrotting has more than two thousand user-submitted links; Notes: Interesting Google Satellite Maps is a more traditional list of links to interesting places.

Hacks: In case you missed it in the comments, myGmaps, which launched in March, follows up on a hack that lets you run Google Maps with data from your own server (see previous entry). Cary used the standalone hack to create a New York subway map, as I reported earlier; that project has now been expanded to include Washington, DC and San Jose.

Groups: Naturally, Google Groups has a group for Google Maps.

Pubs: According to The Inquirer’s Paul Hale, Google Maps can’t find any.

Are you sick of Google Maps stuff yet? Let me leave you with one last thought. I mentioned that I was away recently working on a project where only dialup Internet access was available. I was astonished at how slowly the Google Maps satellite photos loaded. Granted, I’ve been on highspeed for a while, but that may simply have been a very slow line. Has anyone else noticed whether Google Maps’s satellite feature is even useable at dialup speeds?