Google Maps Lockdown
As you can see, Google Maps applications that don’t properly use the Google API are being deprived of their maps and prompted via javascript to get a proper API key:
The text of this threatening-and-somewhat-evil notice reads:
The Google Maps API key used on this website was registered for a different web site. You can generate a new key for this website at www.google.com/apis/maps/
So now it seems that Google isn’t quite so friendly to people who want to utilize their services by scraping maps. “Don’t be evil” continues to fall to the wayside…
Comparing MSN Virtual Earth with Google Maps
MSN’s new beta of Virtual Earth seems like a better solution to mapping than Google maps, but you’re about to see just how much better it actually is. We’ll use the Amazon.com Corporate Headquarters as our example here, which is located currently on 12th Ave. S. in Seattle Washington.
Resolution:
MSN VE lets you get at least three times closer to your target than google maps:
Labelling:
MSN Virtual Earth seems to know more about what a property is than Google Maps:
Cool Interface:
Virtual Earth has a cooler semi-transparent overlay at the top, compared to Google’s blase and clunky “one thing after another” approach:
Not to mention that MSN Virtual Earth also has built in “locate me” and blogging features. Wow! aThese are just my first impressions, but it seems like Microsoft has built a Google-Maps killer!
Update:
MSN Virtual Earth is down? At least, this morning, it’s not responding to ping:
Pinging virtualearth.msn.com [207.46.159.135] with 32 bytes of data:
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Request timed out.
Ping statistics for 207.46.159.135:
Packets: Sent = 4, Received = 0, Lost = 4 (100% loss)
For more on MSN Virtual Earth check these out (from Scoble):
Google Maps Changes Interface
Check out Google Maps:
The interface has changed ever-so-slightly. There are now buttons for satellite versus regular maps:
