A number of Irish bloggers are pointing to Google Map's new coverage of Ireland, but on examination you'll find it woefully short of detail outside of any major city. Good to see Ireland's inclusion but I think there's still a definite need for something like OpenEir.
Well, google's map of Ireland doesn't even include the ability to search by location or get directions. These will hopefully come along with later implementations of Google's map of Ireland, as well as more detail for less-built-up areas. So there's still hope on that front.
But with regards the 'layers' that you are proposing to put on top of maps with OpenEir - some enterprising young hackers in the US have found a way of putting their own "layers" on top of google maps using greasemonkey and custom xml files. One nice thing that comes with this is the ability to get directions "to" and "from" places that you put into the xml file. But the thing that really sells it for me, and it's the simplest thing in the world, is the ability to associate pictures (or movies, or sound files) with reference points. To use an example you gave for OpenEir: The O'Connors can look at a 'scenic areas' layer, get directions to this place and see a picture preview of the area. Pretty nifty.
If you're interested in taking a look at what the competition are up to, you should check out this enadget post about making your own annotated google map[1]. Note: the annotated Ithaca map on the engadget page is broken (it's written for a previous version of the greasemonkey script). I've fixed it up and put it up on my website[2].
[1] http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000917034960/
[2] http://www.fuckcuntandbollocks.com/dorkus/ithaca_walk.xml
Posted by: John | April 19, 2005 at 09:37 PM
Great feedback John, thank you! Remember I'm a GPS newbie so it's going to take me some time to absorb this info ;-)
I love the idea of adding photos to waypoints - that for me is the real beauty of GPS, once we've gathered the waypoint information there's all sorts of things we can do with it and ways to manipulate it. That's why I'm advocating a 'small pieces, loosely joined' approach and instead of trying to 'boil the ocean'.
Posted by: James Corbett | April 19, 2005 at 11:10 PM