Warren Seen

Prompted by last nights thoughts on web 2.0 and in particular the fun google maps mashup that is the Web 2.0 Innovation map, I got to thinking why the whole mashup thing just hasn’t happened here.

It occurred to me in the shower this morning (that’s enough detail thank you very much) that the situation is all Sensis/whereis.com’s fault.

Why? In short, their API policy sucks. No free and open API at all from what I can see.

Unfortunately it seems that no one else has street level coverage to quite the extent that whereis does. Of course, the fact that whereis keeps telling me it can’t find my street number (67) and instead suggests the number 23 down the street does not exactly instill confidence in their back end.

So what of the big two? Microsoft’s Live Local and Google Maps? Well unsurprisingly, neither have very detailed maps of Tasmania, and the satellite photography is identical. Want to see Launceston, the city I live in? Good luck with that. At least Google maps can find Launceston though - local.live.com can’t seem to, even though it’s right there on the map in front of me. *sigh*

So useful Australian geo-mashups are out of the question until there is a decent, freely available mapping API that Aussie web 2.0 developers can harness.

Footnote: freaky confluence of thought

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 4th, 2006 at 3:13 pm and is filed under web2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.