sj's Longest Now [v.1]

Lots of good news on the mapping front these days.  After years
with no real improvements to mapquest, yahoo! maps,  et al, there
are some new mapping tools gaining attention and server-farms. 

My favorite at the moment is map24; which does five huge things right:

1. Clear, intuitive internationalization:
   follow the “international” or “choose map” links at the top, to get a
   localized interface and map (in 12 languages).  As crazy as it sounds, there is NO WAY to get to, e.g.,
   mapquest.de from mapquest.com. 
2. Interactive zooming,
   letting you choose the rectangle you want to zoom into.  This is a
   sexy concept — useful for maximizing the effectiveness of printouts —
   and brilliantly executed (it is done smoothly, as if panning in). 
   Also of interest: they dynamically update the location of street and
   region names so that they all fit on your map. 
3. Highlighting of one-way streets. 
   For whatever bizarre reason, many major map companies (Y!, G) still
   don’t do this, and mapquest only offers it at the highest level of
   zoom..
4. Providing excellent in-map tools:  A distance measure,
   that both shows you interactive distance-circles around a point, and
   lets you plot out a multi-leg path, adding the distances of each leg to
   the map; and a reorient yourself tool that quickly zooms out and back in.
5. Allowing you to have a big map:
   one 98% the size of your screen.  Speed is proportional to the
   size of your map is, but this still rocks my geographical location.

Unfortunately, map24 isn’t fast; it can take a good half-minute to load
initially, depending on how well your machine handles its Java
applet.  They offer a static mode which is significantly faster, but still not as fast as the other big map providers.

Other amazing mapping services that are steadily improving: 

• Google Maps, which has hit the review circuit recently: fast and cute; offers
  maps 75% of your screen size; currently ad-free, and only for the US.  (Note that Google partners w/ map24 to provide maplinks for the European Google sites)
• Mapblast, now part of MSN, which offers maps 50% of your screen size, and some excellent fonts and icons for marking up their maps
• Terrafly, offering satellite and aerial images of much of the world (NYT review; supported by NASA and IBM); also slow, but gov’t-sponsored and ad-free.
• Keyhole,
  offering high-resolution, high-quality flyby views of much of the
  world; via a free 7-day trial or $30/year subscription.  Talk
  about sex appeal!

And here are some mapping overviews for more:

• Jonathan Crowe’s blog, The Maproom (check out his folksonomy linkset)
• Carl Zimmerman on the state of maps at the end of 2002

Hoom! maps have sadly shut their doors…