Develop Reference

Use own image as map and mark places using x,y coordinates in android

I need to use my own image as a map and place markers (or a small flag-image) dynamically on the map at different positions (x,y coordinates or l,t,r,b parameters) on the map based on certain criteria. I am having problems implementing it with 'ImageView', 'ImageMap' & 'Drawable' and have searched all questions on stackoverflow. Any help would be appreciated.

I did something similar to this for my very first app. Inside of my activity, I created a custom View class, where I overrode the onDraw method and drew my map image, flags, etc. This is the tutorial I used, I recommend you check it out: Anddev.org (you may not need to implement scrolling, but the rest of it should be relevant).
Alternatively, you can use the Google Maps API to display their map with Overlays but it doesn't sound like that's what you're looking to do.

You have to user Overlays for displaying images on a map. A very good tutorial is given in the official docs.

customize Google Maps API

Does anyone know how to:
1) make the Google map not zoom-able? make it so it is at a fixed zoom size and the user cannot change it?
2) have the map API load a picture of my choosing and overlay the little blue dot of the user's current location over it?
Here is what I want to do, I'm want to have a custom picture of the world (that i have created in Photoshop or w/e, it will be .jpeg, .png, or whatever file format will work) the picture of the world will be 'artsy' and I just want the Google maps to overlay the little blue dot of where you are in the world. For example, if you are in New York, NY, you will see the picture of the world with the blue dot over what on the picture is New York.
Any help will be greatly appreciated, Thanks

You should be able to control the map as follows:
map = (MapView) findViewById(R.id.mapview);
map.setBuiltInZoomControls(false);
As for overlaying an image, you'll need to create an image layout file (in XML) and then inflate that over the top of the map. This tutorial shows you the basics of inflating a layout and adding it to an existing view:
http://www.mysamplecode.com/2011/10/android-dynamic-layout-using-xml-add.html
To position the inflated layout (your image), you will need to use LayoutParams (http://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/LinearLayout.LayoutParams.html) to set the position of the new view on to the map.
Hope that helps.

Regarding you second question: it sounds like you actually want to replace the Google Maps tiles by images you've created yourself. As far as I know, that's not possible with the Maps API. You can potentially hack something together by adding your own creation as overlay to the map, but that may not give your the results you're looking for, especially if you want the user to still be able to pan/drag the map around.
In stead, you might want to take a look at the osmdroid (Open Street Maps for Android) project. They do support loading in your own tiles via the ModularTileProviderArchitecture. It'll probably give you more freedom and flexibility, but might be overkill for what you're after.

I know that OSM is hip and cool, but the OP asked about Google maps — and the question is readily answered in the Google Maps API documentation (https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/).
The Google Maps API has supported custom maps for years. I think you can edit their first "ImageMapType" (https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/maptypes#CustomMapTypes) example to solve your problem.
In your case, you would set the "maxZoom" and "minZoom" fields to whatever zoom you want to create artwork for. Use the "mapOptions" dictionary to take away the zoom control. You'll need to cut your artwork into tiles, and replace their "getTileUrl" function with one that returns your tiled image.

Mission impossible? google maps mask effects in iphone or android

i've come up with an idea that has a mask effects in google maps so that it can highlight a city .but i've searched the internet again and again found no document about this.
so ,is it possible to make mask effects in android or ios just like the effets below? and how to?
http://cadgis-blog.blogspot.com/2011/10/google-maps-create-cool-mask-effect-on.html

So there's two problems there. The first is where to get the boundary data from, and the second is how do you draw it on a map.
Answering the second part first, if you're using the iOS map view (MKMapView): you'll want to look into MKPolygonView. You can definitely highlight an arbitrary polygon, but the usual highlighting effect looks like a coloured overlay inside the polygon.
The thing to do, therefore, would be to make a huge polygon that encompasses the entire country, with your region as a hole in the polygon. That is, I believe, what your demo does. You can make an MKPolygon with the polygonWithPoints:count:interiorPolygons: method, and pass in your 'hole' as an interior polygon to be cut out.
Regarding the first part, how to get the data: what you need is a set of latitude/longitude pairs that make up the border for your region. Your example used this dataset, which is administrative borders for Switzerland. You'll need to find yourself a dataset that encompasses the borders for cities in the country you're interested in. I would imagine that you would store the coordinates of the borders in a database embedded in your app.

How to produce these views? How Android screens go beyond the simple controls that have Android?

How Android screens go beyond the simple controls that have Android, look at this for example.
How come so that each key responds independently? Is it a single image, several or a drawing?
How to put each circle in the specific country? What if I want a country to be selected?

You can make your own controls by subclassing a view and overriding it's methods. The onDraw method gives you a canvas where you can place just about anything. Check the official android API or this post to get your started.
For the first image, my guess is that it is one image and the position of each click is translated to the corresponding key on the piano. The second image might also be a single image with separate overlays for each country and circle to set the desired color and place the numbers (that's what I would probably do, but it can be done differently).
If you require more flexibility than fixed images, take a look at creating 2D graphics.

How to buil a clickable custom map using path and region in Android

To explain my problem, I am going to start from a case study that is not what I have to do but which will give you a good idea of what I am talking about.
Imagine the map of the US in which you have the states / provinces. Each of these provinces has got a shape that is random (by random I mean it is not a rectangle, a triangle or a circle). I need to build these shapes independantly, size them correctly and put them at the correct place on the screen to represent the country. Finally, each of these province should be clickable.
To achieve that :
1) I don't want to use google map
2) I guess that I'll have to construct each provine using android path and android region ... can you confirm?
3) Is there a graphical tool for building these paths (photoshop import ?)
4) Assuming that I succeed to build the path, how can I put them at the correct place on the screen ?
5) How can I make these path clickable ?
Basically, I want to build an interactive map with clickable items that doesn't use Google map because it won't necessarly be a real map.
Thanks for your help,
R.

There are lot of variables in the problem you describe:
If you don't want to use google-maps, you'll need to use another engine. There are a few open-source ones available.
If you feel you don't need a map engine, you'll need to provide you're own image of the US to draw on an pin the image to the View
How do you plan to draw the boundaries? Do you have coordinate data for the boundaries or do you plan to draw them manually.
I would suggest first looking at openstreetmap: http://www.openstreetmap.org/ The have a lot of information and tools on creating Maps. From there you can attack adding to the phone. Or you can use their web api and build a web view for doing what you suggest.