Mapping library/API

[John Haskey]

Can anyone recommend a good mapping library/api that I can use on an
internal website without subscribing to Google Maps Premier (at $10,000
per year) ? This is for a market visualization application to show where
orders are coming from. Thanks!

---john.

[Jason Wehmhoener]

If you aren't reselling this product I don't think there's really anything preventing you from using the free public Google Maps Data API. 

There are truly free map sources available however. 

http://www.openstreetmap.org/

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Main_Page

-Jason

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[Quinn McLaughlin]

Gmaps api is free for a pretty huge amount of usage:

http://code.google.com/apis/maps/

This should provide for plenty of usage for the internal visualization tool you are seeking to write.

I use my API Key in Rails with the (free) YM4R plugin, and for geocoding with (free) GeoKit. Makes nice little mapping apps fast. If you like I can share some examples.

Quinn

[John Haskey]

In the FAQ I read this:

"Can I use the Google Maps API on a commercial website?

However, not all commercial uses are allowed. If your site meets any
of the following criteria you must use Google Maps API Premier:

* Your site is only available to paying customers.
* Your site is only accessible within your company or on your
intranet."

The app I'm working on falls under the second bullet point.

---john.

[ch...@studiocruz.com]

A Google Earth .kmz script can use data accessed from a public server
to show geolocated events in real time, but I don't know what the
commercial usage restrictions are.

- Chris Yonge

[Jason Wehmhoener]

Give open street maps a look, but my earlier point about "nothing preventing" was more of a technical comment than a strictly legal one.

-Jason

[Quinn McLaughlin]

So personally I would get around this by using the same API key to expose something on your public website. It would suffice to put up a business location map, or some other data that might help customers. Then you meet the letter of google's usage restriction (which, IMHO, is targeted at very large corporations using a lot of google server time).

Come to think of it, is your site accessible to the public anywhere? If there is some publicly accessible part to the website - mapping or not - I think you are clear to map away on the restricted (internal) portion of the site, per the below.

Any lawyers out there with 2c on this? Is google going to eat John for lunch if he starts mapping internally??? :)

Quinn

[John Haskey]

Thanks for the pointer to OpenStreetMap and also the tip about using a
.kmz file. At this point I'm going to try and adapt the example shown
here:

http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/OpenLayers_Dynamic_POI

I think it will give me what I want. If not I may explore the .kmz file
but I'm not sure I want to install Google Earth on everyone's computer.

---john.

PS. If you want a 'fun' afternoon, try installing Google Earth without the
updater and in a directory other than the default. Unless things have
changed recently you're in for a treat! :-)