Problems with the map

The map feature on AudlemOnline has just been badly affected by Google's commercial policies.

Google maps are technically brilliant and are used by many websites and individuals all over the world, Until very recently Google have offered a free API (Applications Program Interface) which developers like the AudlemOnline team can use to enhance the standard map offering with special add-ons such as the gazetteer.

In their wisdom (dare we say greed?) Google have decided to charge users of this API quite large sums of money for the continued use of their API. AudlemOnline has no small sums of money at its disposal, let alone large ones, to buy into this arrangement, so we cannot go on using the Google offering, other than just as a standard Google map.

There are other free mapping systems available, some of them offering an API, but in the nature of these things there is quite a lot of time and effort required to implement them on AudlemOnline.

We will go on looking for a sensible solution, but it would be interesting to know from our readers whether there really is a demand for the map facility, or should we just quietly drop it altogether?

Please let us have your views.

Note that the cycle maps use a completely different system and are not affected by this problem.

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