First, go to my brother's blog to see an example of of this working. Look on the left column for the element "Current Location". It displays a small Google Map with one place mark of his current location, zoomed out far enough for a person to recognize the area of earth they are looking at.
The way I created this was...
Step 1 - Prep your blog for Google Maps:
Go to the chapter on how to embed a map. Perform steps 1 and 2 from there in order to prime your blog to handle Google Maps.
Step 2 - Resolve any conflicting map names:
The logic you installed into the blog template on step 1 above will create a map named 'google_map_01'. If you only intend to have this little map as a page element, you can keep that name and not make any further changes.
If you intend to later add more maps to your blog, then you need to make sure that you don't name them 'google_map_01'. You can read the chapter on how to install multiple maps in your blog. The bottom line is that each map must have a unique name, and each must be explicitly called in the "load" and "unload" routines in order to show up.
So if you already have a 'google_map_01' in your blog somewhere, then you need to give this small map a different name. In my brother's blog, I named this map "google_map_02'. In his case, I updated the page element Javascript and HTML to reflect this name. I also added google_map_02" to the load and unload routines in the blog template.
Step 3 - Add The Page Element:
Go into the blog's layout and added a page element. insert the following code into the element.
Step 4 - Update the coordinates:
You need to update the latitude and longitude of that you wish to have marked and centered on the map. You can update this easily by editing the element.
Notes:
- The initial zoom is set to 3, which I found to be a nice place to start since you can recognize the continent and countries at that level.
- I've set this map to type "MAP" because it is too small for a satellite image to be useful.
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