I just discovered http://www.planiglobe.com/, a site which lets you generate maps of different areas.
I had been looking for something like this for quite a while so I could generate maps I could include along with pictures in a trip journal. The issue with things like Yahoo Maps, MapQuest, as well as the mapping software I use with my Garmin GPS receiver is that they're all copyrighted and I have no license to redistribute those maps, so I couldn't legally reproduce the maps on my website.
The planiglobe maps come with a quite generous license so you can do just about anything you want with them. (Click the "copyright/license" link on their page for details.)
The maps really aren't as useful as Yahoo Maps or Mapquest in a number of ways:
- Only major roads are shown; they don't have displays of every street
- Roads are not labelled
- The maps don't have a lot of the other features shown on Yahoo or Mapquest (e.g., parks)
- The most "zoomed-in" size is still quite a lot larger than the highest resolution of Yahoo or MapQuest
- You can add and label your own points on the map, but you have to have Latitude and Longitude for them (tip: see here or here for resources for finding coordinates)
- You can only display individual points, not routes (though you can kinda-sorta make it show routes by plotting lots of individual points along the route--useful if you can dump such points from along your route from a GPS receiver, not so useful otherwise. But large numbers of points don't seem to be a problem; in a brief test I ran it handled ~250 points without any trouble.)
Still, for all these limitations, I think it's absolutely great just for the fact that I can legally copy the maps and use them in my own trip reports on my own website.
