Denver, Canada: MapQuest, a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL Inc., launched two new mapping sites built on open technology and OpenStreetMap (OSM) data. The sites, in the Netherlands and Switzerland, will utilise the new MapQuest brand and interface continuing its rollout of country specific open sites.
The Netherlands and Switzerland sites, located respectively at open.mapquest.nl and open.mapquest.ch, will each have all of the features introduced by MapQuest since July, including: language selection, map tiles updated every 15 minutes, search updated every 5 minutes; driving directions updated daily; map Toolbar for easy searching on the map; send to Facebook, email or embed in website; more sharing and send to options; draggable routes and right-click on map to identify nearest location.
Much of the technology used to create and power these sites is freely available and can be found on the MapQuest Developer Network at https://developer.mapquest.com.
“In July, MapQuest saw a great opportunity to improve the OSM data and felt the only way to approach this was to become part of the OSM community,” said Antony Pegg, Product Manager, MapQuest. “We believe we are closing the gap between our consumer websites and our developer contributions, with the ultimate goal of bringing new members into the community.”
To date, MapQuest has launched mapping sites built on OSM data in 10 countries and two continents. In Asia, the India site launched in October 2010, and in Europe, sites have been launched for the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands and Switzerland.
In July, MapQuest announced a USD 1M fund to support its effort to grow the OSM community in the US.
Source: MapQuest
