Building a Better Dalian Map

The Dalian map is live. Check it out here.

I get lost everywhere. One of my first challenges when moving to Dalian was finding a good map of the city. At the time, there was next to nothing online. Rick at Panda Passport had what looked like a hand-drawn thing (can't find it now), and the city's website had little of value. Most of what I found were ridiculously short on details, like this, or slightly more useful, like this. I finally picked up a five-RMB fold-out from a street vendor downtown; most of it was in Chinese, but at least it included bus routes.

Atlas is a handy web-mashup based on Google maps. It's easy to use, wiki-editable with a click and embed-able. Except for this:

Atlas can't find China. Actually, it's not Atlas, but Google. China exists in the Googleverse as an empty border, sometimes surrounding disconnected cities with no roads or geography. Google's own map API is no better. The problem, as Alex learned after emailing Google:

China restricts the export of geographical data. So there will be no API using Google Maps technology until the regulation is changed. Not a technical issue, a legal one. That's right... you won't be able to embed Google Maps into your website (satellite images do work, however)... and actually copying an image from ditu.google.com (say, a screenshot) onto your site may be questionable, legally.

It is possible to build an interactive map of China. It's just not easy. We have to go local and go with people who know. I've started a Dalian map on this site, and it is open for wiki-style editing, so add whatever you like. Embed it on your own site, even, or make your own. And if there's a better mapping API, I'm all ears.

Before: Five right: The Global, the GOOD, the Tragic, the Awesome, the Possibilities | After: Shots in the Dark: The Dalian Police Murder