Today we were introduced, by the lovely Dr Ellul, to the API for Open Street Map. Open Street Map for those of you who aren't in the know, is a Wiki approach to mapping. It's quite similar to Google Maps which I'm sure that you are all familiar with, but there are no commercial interests or issues of copyright. Indeed, you can download an entire detailed map of the UK to your hand-drive if you like - for free! Try doing that with Google.... you'll need a spare £20-30K I gather. The beautiful thing, is that as it's OpenSource, it's constantly updated and kept as current as the users make it. The slight drawback is that areas with non-techy people, or indeed no people at all, don't get mapped. But the percentages are growing... a recent comparison reckoned about 80% of the map was complete compared to the Ordnance Survey. Pretty good. Well anyway... to the point of this post. Google have an API. That's a Application Programming Interface. It's a way for you to use and customise their maps in your own website essentially. Infact here an example of one I made earlier this year...
http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~ucesjsm/
... and what we have been introduced too today is the OSM version called Cloudmade. It looks pretty simple to use... though I admit I'm at a loss as to why my map has appeared in tiles as below. I think it might be to do with trying to embed it in this blog. If/When I come around to having to use it properly I'll have to figure th at out...!
