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What is an alternative for google ads?

Google Maps alternative (using standard KML import) that's ad-free?

  • I need a non-Google Maps alternative, due to limitations in how Google displays My Maps. Mapchannels.com is very flexible, but it has two issues: its display doesn't seem to work for mobile users, and it displays small ads (and has suspended its former policy of letting a map creator pay to remove ads). Other options? This is a map I don't need (or want) viewers to be able to modify. There are about 210 markers now and it will grow on the order of 5 markers a month. I made it using Google My Maps, so it's available as standard KML export. To display it on the web, I want a non-Google service that has more flexibility than My Maps (such as the ability for a viewer to choose to see only one of its six categories at a time, using a dropdown or similar), fewer limitations, and ideally a super-minimal interface with no top bar / wasted space. Here is the mapchannels display of it (to show the data and the beautifully minimal interface they offer on the desktop at least [as opposed to the brokenness if you view it on a phone] - this is a self-link): http://data.mapchannels.com/mc4/19352/kalapierson_events_19352.htm. The mapchannels ad is small, but I'm looking for entirely ad-free.

  • Answer:

    http://mapbox.com/ has a bunch of plans and tools, and they contribute a lot of work back to the community (eg, leaflet.js).

kalapierson at Ask.Metafilter.Com Visit the source

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Have you checked the http://www.openstreetmap.org/? http://switch2osm.org/ has handy-dandy step-by-step how to switch.

straw

I'm really looking for a service that will import KML, because I have way more data than I'd want to recreate from scratch at least for the moment. Mapchannel is an example of such a service; OSM isn't (they suggest you "trace" all markers - i.e. recreate manually) and mapbox says KML works very poorly. (I'm really happy OSM exists, but it's not my solution currently.)

kalapierson

For full control over layout you can use https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/javascript/tutorial instead of My Maps, and then create your own dropdown. It requires some JavaScript programming though.

teki

So I just use http://www.openlayers.org/ to drop a KML file over a user-selectable set of tiles from either Google or OpenStreetMap. http://www.flutterby.net/2009-06-19_kml_test. Feel free to "view source" and copy-and-paste. If you've got a high volume site, you'll need to look at licensing, and note that I'm caching the OSM tiles on my server so I don't choke theirs (should there ever be three or four people looking at pages on that site...).

straw

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