The recent release of Google's mapping service has wrought a flourish of creative hacks and other uses of their fantastic GIS and satellite technology.

Among these is the innovative pairing of craigslist and Google Maps that visually interprets craigslist apartment listings, and the nearly over-the-top StompBox, a home-brew vehicle tracking system and mobile hotspot that uses Google Maps in conjunction with Verizon's recently unveiled mobile broadband service.

In the wake of these developments, we've seen a rash of websites purporting the ease of integrating Google Maps for any sort of use. Only time will tell whether Google embraces or restricts the use of their service in this way.

While I'm on the subject, Google has also recently begun suing companies for artificially inflating the per-click rate of certain keywords in their AdSense service.

I suppose this begs the question -- will we soon be needing to add a blog category for Google alone? At this rate, I suspect we will.