Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 9-7.
Our HTML geolocation application adapted to use Google Maps
Other Location-based Services
We've looked at one of the popular mapping services, but it's worth considering
broadening your horizons to other providers of both basic geolocation services, as well
as providers of things like map tiles (the graphic "tiles" that actually display).
There are a handful of reasons you might consider hedging your bets, and at least
ensuring you can perform equivalent actions with other services:
Free services, scaling and cost
: Many services, like Google, Yahoo,
Bing, MapQuest, Nokia/Ovi etc. offer some level of free service. The
usual terms dictate that you and your users can consume a set
number of map impressions per day before being throttled, and/or
asked to pay.
Different strengths and weaknesses
: Some services, like Google,
offer useful things like directions in some locations, details of public
transport, etc. But in other places, services like Open Street Map
provide significantly more detail, more recent data, and for some
services like OpenCycleMap, the entire map rendering and data is
focused on specialist uses: in this case, cyclists.
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