Ireland Maps - Alternatives to Google Maps
For a while now, I’ve been trying to find a good map that covers Ireland in more detail outside of the major town and cities. Google Maps has always been my favourite mapping service but when it came to looking up any areas outside Dublin, Limerick, Cork, etc, the coverage hasn’t been the best. So, recently I came across two other sites offering similar features to but better coverage than Google Maps. These two sites are Map24 and Yahoo Maps. All 3 mapping websites offer a user friendly AJAX/Flash interaction tool to easily get around their maps. So, let me review each of the mapping sites and include a review of the coverage as well. Here we go…
Google Maps
While Google Maps has always been my choice for looking up maps or integrating into client websites, it really doesn’t have the coverage I’d like for Ireland. It’s just too out of date. It’s a suprise that it is because I don’t think it would take them much to do the update. They’ve announced the creation of an extra 500 jobs in their European Head Office in Dublin recently and they also use Ireland as the home for their patents company to avoid paying millions in taxes each year, and so on… so, why can’t they be nice and update the maps of Ireland? Enough said on that but aside from the lack of coverage, Google Maps is a great interface. I’m sure most people have used it. It’s fast, not too resource heavy and is fun/easy to use. Google offer an API to allow you to embed the mapping service into your own website. To show you the coverage from Google Maps, here’s a map of Navan taken from their site (click for a larger view):
and here’s the link too.
Map24
I came across Map24 last week and immediately liked the interface. It uses much of the same features that Google Maps does but it has some neat little extras, such as it’s a flash application, it shows map information icons (e.g. parking, hospitals, etc), has route planning and route flight (which is really cool… you put in your start and end points and it will fly you over the route to take… class) and you can also do a 3D view (where you can rotate the map view to get away from the traditional satelite view). There are two things that got at me about this site though… it seemed to take up extra resources and crashed my browser when I first used it but it’s been running smooth since. The other little thing is a user feature: if you leave your mouse over the map for a second it pops up a little window with information. It’s a good idea but it kept popping up when I didn’t want it to. There’s surely a way to turn this off so I’ll look for it. The mouse controls are a little different to Google but once you get used to it, it’s quite easy to use. They have a beta API at the moment so you can embed the mapping into your own site just like Google. There is also the ability to save your maps and routes, which is also quite neat. Their coverage of Ireland is much better than Google. Here’s a map of Navan from their system (click for a larger view):
and here’s the link as well.
Yahoo Maps
Yahoo Maps is very similar to Google Maps. However, it uses flash as the frontend for this application as opposed to AJAX with Google Maps. The interface works in the pretty much the same way as Google Maps. It includes a route planning feature but it doesn’t seem to have GeoCoding for Ireland, much like Google Maps. Map24 seemed to be the only service that knew my current address and my folks address when planning a route. However, in saying that, I think that Yahoo Maps is that little bit better than Google Maps since it’s coverage of Ireland is much better. There is also an API offered in both AJAX and Flash so you can embed this mapping service into your own website. Here’s the coverage of Navan from Yahoo Maps (click for larger view):
and here’s the link to the map on their site.
Conclusion
All 3 are great services but if you’re looking for detailed maps outside the major towns/cities, use either Yahoo Maps or Map24. If you are looking to plan a route in Ireland, Map24 is your choice. You could always use the AA Route Planning service but it doesn’t show you a map. I like all 3 mapping services and will have to play around with the API’s and embed them into my clients websites. At the moment, Google Maps just isn’t good enough and they really need to get the finger out and update their coverage. In the meantime, I’m going to use Map24 as my mapping service of choice until Google puts Ireland into the 21st Century (mapping wise) but heh, by then, I might just love Map24 too much and just not go back!!!
Map24 - My Thumbs Up!!! 
