webDotWiz has been creating a couple of Live Map collections of his own lately and has learnt a few tricks along the way.

More specifically, webDotWiz has some railway magazines with very comprehensive maps of various U.S. rail company trackage and freight yards. Curiousity led to wanting to view these freight yards on Live Maps to see if they were as large as the magazine articles described them.

Now you don't have to create your own Live Map of train freight yards but you may want to locate famous landmarks around the world, famous bridges, skyscrapers, famous museums, mountains, planes that were under the mapping photography plane, ships, and more. Or you may simply want to plot some trips you've taken because at various places you took lots of photos. It's this latter option that can be quite exciting because you can accomplish two tasks at once: show family and friends where you've travelled and let them see the sites you photographed along the way.

Belive it or not, even though you're using a map on your computer screen, you'll find it easier to locate places if you have a map on paper alongside you. That's because when you zoom in on your map on the screen in Live Maps you lose the big picture even though you're seeing much more detail. It's all too easy to get lost, so to speak. As well, you get distracted and find lots of other interesting sights, especially if you're viewing the Live Map in aerial or hybrid view.

Some form of paper map or schematic is quite essential if you're viewing locations around the world which you've never visited. It helps you get perspective by finding cities, for example, whose location you know and can use as a reference point. Make sure you put in a pushpin so if you get lost, you can return to this city or town later on.

There are three ways to view a map on Live Maps: road, aerial and hybrid, the latter being a combination of road and aerial to display street and road names and important public places. Road view is similar to a street directory and shows plenty of detail. As well the road map view is available world-wide whereas the aerial and hybrid views may be limited. For example, Australia's capital cities can be zoomed in to a high level of detail in aerial view but once you're out in the rural areas, the same level of detail doesn't apply.

So to make life a little simpler, locate a place in road view then switch to aerial or hybrid view. You'll then find, depending on where you are, that the town or city has a higher level of detail via bird's eye view (a popup will inform you). Sometimes you'll be expecting a location to show in road view but it's not there - that's when you zoom in a bit closer. webDotWiz came across this when trying to find railway lines when creating his Best of U.S. Railways collections.

Finally, if you have your own web site, you'll be able to store and refer to your photos online. Otherwise you'll need to upload your photos you're going to use in your collection onto one of the free online photo storage sites such as BubbleShare, Flickr or Photobucket.

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