Webwatch - Summer 2009

For this edition, I'm going to look at online mapping in and around our area. My favourite is Google Maps (maps.google.co.uk). This site has good street maps together with aerial imagery of our area, all packaged in a very easy to use interface. Type in your postcode to instantly re-centre the map on your street. A close second on the usability front is Microsoft's Live Search (maps.live.com). Again, good quality street map is combined with excellent aerial imagery coverage of our area. Both these sites are must haves, bookmarked in your favourites.

One of the earliest online mapping sites I used was multimap (www.multimap.com). It has proved to be so popular that the company was taken over by Microsoft and it now uses the same mapping as Microsoft's Live Search. The interface is different, with more advertising and the ability to save, plan and routes.

Ordnance Survey's own site (getamap.ordnancesurvey.co.uk) will now allow you to view and print small portions of the 25000 Explorers series. The interface is a bit clunky and the map window is excessively small but it does allow online access to its excellent paper maps.

Finally there is Open Street Map (www.openstreetmap.org). This is an example of community mapping at its best. The site shows online mapping that has been collected and collated by keen enthusiasts. Their aim is to provide a community based map, free from the restrictive licensing conditions of some of the commercial map providers. This is an ongoing project and the results for large towns and cities are really impressive. However, our local area is not so well served and most of our villages, with the exception of Dunston, have not yet had their details added. They are constantly looking for volunteers. If you have a GPS capable of recording track logs and some spare time, you could join Open Street Map and put our area on the map. You won't get paid but you will have the satisfaction of seeing your work online and widely used by the community.

The Weaver.