As long-term readers of this blog will recall, last summer Nestoria sponsored the initial development of Mapstraction, a javascript library that makes switching mapping providers as easy as possible.
Yesterday the volunteers behind this opensource project announced a major upgrade, including support for six different mapping providers (MultiMap and Map24 are the newest), support for marker filters, many demos, support for GeoRSS, easy integration of geo-referenced images, a new look and feel to the homepage, and more.
Mapstraction has had more and more coverage recently. We’ve had mapstraction code live on Nestoria results pages (for example this search for a two bed flat to rent in Hampstead under 400 per week) for over six months now, and it works very well. It’s a great tool that everyone in the online mapping community should be aware of. Congratulations to all the volunteers who have contributed - this is a big step forward. So, does this mean we plan on switching away from Google maps? No, Google maps are great. We don’t mind saying how much we like Google’s APIs. To Google’s credit, they haven’t just rested on their lead in this space. Despite great innovation over the last year from other players like Yahoo! Maps and MultiMap, Google have done an excellent job of staying ahead of their competition. The result of all this innovation: more and more features for services like Nestoria and thus for everyone who tries to find a home via our site. We look forward to more new development in this space.
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