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At the risk of going overboard with posts about maps, there’s a couple of other things that came out of Multimap this week that I want to mention.

Yesterday saw the release of the Multimap Open API, a JavaScript interface to much of Multimap’s core mapping functionality, and the power behind mapping on sites such as Yell.com.

The exciting thing about this version however is that it’s available to developers for use in mash-ups and other non-commercial projects. If you want to have a play with it, go sign-up for a key and take a look at some of the documentation.

In the final piece of map related news, John McKerrell, a lead engineer on the above mentioned API, has knocked together a neat bookmarklet which allows you to embed Open Street Map maps into the new Multimap website. This means you can get the richness of Multimap’s geocoding, routing, and useful information search on top of the OSM map tiles.

With Multimap being a sponsor of OSM, whose to say you won’t see this feature embedded into the site in the near future. It would be a great way to deliver the OSM concept, and indeed the data, to the mainstream.

One of my favourite features of the new Multimap website is the different varieties of map data you can pull into the map viewer. Rather than just one layer of rendered vector data seen on many web-based maps, Multimap allows you to select from various other data sets depending on your location.

For example, if you’re a born-and-bred Londoner like me, you’re probably familiar with the magnificent A-Z style maps from Collins Bartholomew. These have always been available on the web from various sites, but seeing them in all their slippy glory on a high resolution monitor is a truly glorious sight.

My other favourite is the classic pink Land Ranger OS maps favoured by walkers and cyclists across Britain. Take a look at this area of the Lake District and try swapping between the data types to see exactly the kind of extra detail the raster maps give you.

To check if there are other map data-sets available in your area you can hover over the map button at the top left of the map. If data is available a small pop-out preview will appear which you can select to change the map style. The UI’s not perfect, and there’s probably a better way to expose this feature, but we’re working on that.

I’ve been contributing to the W3C HTML Working Group working on the next version of HTML. I say contributing, I’ve found it tough enough keeping up with the pure volume of mail the group generates to make much of a contribution so far. Also, a lot of the initial discussions have been around some pretty high-level design principles which I’m leaving to the proper experts for the moment.

One thought-provoking topic that I have been following closely however is the <indent> vs. <blockquote> discussion. It’s not worth going in to the specifics of that conversation here, but you can find that in the archives if you want to follow it. What it has raised in my mind though is the question of using presentational mark-up in HTML.

Most of what I’ve learnt about Web Standards like XHTML and HTML teaches that mark-up is for giving structure and meaning to content, and that CSS is for presenting that content in a web browser or other environment of human consumption. However, history tells us that HTML is not used like that. The <blockquote> example is a good one — it’s regularly used to indent content in the middle of prose whether the content inside the <blockquote> element is really a blockquote at all.

The question is, would it be better for the Semantic Web if, instead of less knowledgeable page authors using <blockquote> incorrectly, an element like <indent> was created which allowed authors to simply indent content with no implied semantics?

I think most people’s reaction to this is: No, use CSS to indent the content. And that was my initial reaction as well. However, following the argument through I think I can see both sides of the argument. Why pollute the web with incorrectly used HTML when we can give authors that want it a semantic-free mechanism for indenting their content?