Mapstraction progress

Mapstraction has been making good progress with integration from geopress (awsome plugin for embedding maps in wordpress) to Nestoria (awsome map for finding somewhere to live) (Other sites can be found here). One of the more interesting things to note from mapstraction’s evolution is the clear but unnoticed disparity in APIs. Microsoft Virtual Earth has by far the best aerial imagery of the UK, they have complete high resolution coverage! See an example here. But the API is perhaps the worst thing on the planet. Little documentation and many ‘basic’ features missing. The good thing for you, of course, is that mapstraction abstracts this all away and you need not worry because we’re spending the time to make it work. A hidden feature of Yahoo Maps is their high res data (see here) for lots of cities. It’s not obvious as they don’t hide good imagery behind brown goo of death.