This is meant to be a forum for sharing ideas, implementations, and help for the Google Maps API

GMapCatcher is an offline maps viewer. It downloads tiles automatically from many providers such as: CloudMade, OpenStreetMap, Yahoo Maps, Google Map. It displays them using a custom GUI. User can view the maps while offline. GMapCatcher doesn't depend on google-map's java scripts so it should work even if google changes them. It also provides a downloading tool.

Natural Earth is a public domain map dataset available at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110m scales. Featuring tightly integrated vector and raster data, with Natural Earth you can make a variety of visually pleasing, well-crafted maps with cartography or GIS software.

CloudMade helps you make the most of map data. We source our maps from OpenStreetMap, the community mapping project which is making a free map of the world. Our aim is to continue the democratization of geo data and to expand access to open geo data through a range of simple yet powerful tools and APIs.