It's the first day of this thing, and I'm really appreciating Google's consolidation of Maps mashups into My Maps. The idea is to integrate some of the best API developments into the Google Maps portal, where they will be more directly and centrally useful to people. Only a few are featured so far, one of them being an absolutely essential distance measurement tool. Interactive distance measurement is a crucial feature in Google Earth, and has been crucially missing from Google Maps.

Here's hoping that tons of mashup developers create the "mapplets" necessary to repackage their work in My Maps.