Hello
I have added the following code to my versin of google map. Kind of not very useful but nice

function handleOption($option, $currentValue) {
if($option=='gmaps_background'){
echo '';
echo'';
}

I also changed in the returned array the type to "2" for the gmaps_background option
I found a nice colorpicker under GPL license at http://jscolor.com/

If you find it useful??? maybe you can add it to next release

PS the only really competing colorpicker I found from Jquery requiered Jquery1.3 so I gave up using that one

Cheers

I've added a color picker (jQuery based) in tonight's build. But asside from when the google earth is loading, I don't see this background. How are you getting it to show?