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16th C. Paris MapParis is made up of 20 arrondissement (districts) that spiral out from the centre of the city like a seashell. Those of us that live in this great city describe where we live by giving the arrondissement and very often the Metro stop and line. If you want to know what arrondissement you're in when you come to Paris you just glance up at the street sign and it will tell you.

Some arrondissements can be described as posh or working-class but generally the arrondissements are a mix of wealthy and not-so-wealthy areas. In fact in some arrondissements one side of the street can be classy and the other not so. The 17th for instance is downright ritzy around Parc Monceau but it encompasses Porte de Clichy and the edge of the Pigalle districts which are not so nice.

Each arrondissement is like a village with its own Town Hall (Marie), Mayor, police station and central post office. All Paris addresses include the arrondissement and the postcode. 75 is the Paris postcode followed by the arrondissement number. So my office in the 16th is postcode 75016.

I'm building a Paris Arrondissement Map here with Google Maps help. Just gotta figure out how to do it. But I've made a start. The map shows the site of my office - a chambre de bonne (maids room) in the 16th Arrondissement, Paris. If I were looking to go out for lunch I could enter restaurants in the Search Bar below the map and it will throw up a list of restaurants in the vicinity. When I tried it it showed Stella which is a rather posh seafood restaurant with valet parking just across the street from my office. You can then scroll through a list of restaurants in the area. It's not definitive but I think I can add to this list (once I figure out how to do it). But you can refine the list by entering Thai Restaurants or whatever. You can also do this with hotels/bars/swimming pools - all sorts of things. And as I understand it you can customize it. With caveats - Google say they don't want their maps used for illegal activity - like showing the drug dealers in an area. I've just tried it with other terms. I entered Gay Bars and it threw up a list - most of which I'd never heard of - but it did list Queen which I know for sure is a gay club in the Champs Elysées. So if you bookmark or RSS this page I'll be building on it. I want eventually to have a Site Map for each Paris Arrondissement - showing where to stay, where to eat, what to do.

One of the neat things about these Google Maps is that they can show you how to get from one place to another. For instance, when I click on restaurants and it shows Stella across the road. I then click on the green arrow unerneath the map Show more results and listed under G is a restaurant a block away called La Palette de Courbet. I then click on Show Directions and it shows me exactly how to get there from my office. I can see photographs of the restaurant and read a review. Then I can click on a hyperlink to take me directly to the restaurant's website which tells me everything I need to know. In this case it's a Lebanese Restaurant that also does Take-Away meals. Closed during August. Cool eh?

Big News today from Google

Today we're excited to announce a new feature on Google Maps that allows you to add maps to your blog or website just by copying and pasting a snippet of HTML. And once you embed the map, it has all the same functionality of the Google Maps you know and love; it's clickable, draggable, and zoomable.

Adding a map to your website or blog is now as easy as embedding a YouTube video. No programming skills are required, and there's no need to sign up for a Maps API key. All it takes is three simple steps:

1. Go to Google Maps and pull up the map you want to embed. It can be a location, a business, a set of driving directions, search results, or a map you've created using our map-making tools.

2. Then click "Link to this page" in the top right-hand corner. Copy the text that you see in the second box.

3. Paste that text into your blog editor or into the HTML of your webpage. We use an iframe so it works on most blog hosting sites like Blogger.
Voila! The map appears on your blog.

Have a look at Google-latlong.blogspot.com

So here's an overlay of the Paris Arrondissements. I could have also added Paris Metro, Paris Shopping, 2007 Tour de France, Hotels, Bars & Nightclubs - in fact anything that others have made for this destination (and there's already quite a few to select from. Have a look at Most Wanted Criminals of Los Angeles!). I could also build my own map that others could get the code for and embed in their sites. I have a couple of ideas in mind. Isn't this great? So if you were planning a conference in Paris, for instance, you could give all the attendees access to their own special map with directions on how to get to the Conference Centre, what Metro stops are nearby, where to eat, what to do.

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