RESTful maps?
I think it would be really cool if the map providers would support a nicer REST addressing scheme for things like countries, states, counties, cities, etc… all of that data is already hierarchical in nature anyway and maps well to a RESTful addressing scheme.
I tried out Google Maps, MapQuest and MapPoint and got very polite error messages.
Instead of dealing with a specific endpoint and a huge querystring+parameters like this:
http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?formtype=address&country=US&popflag=0&latitude=&longitude=&name=&phone=&level=&addtohistory=&cat=&address=&city=minneapoilis&state=mn&zipcode=
We could have:
http://www.mapquest.com/USA/Minnesota/Minneapolis
It sure would make their APIs more flexible/interchangeable…
Weather.com gets close with this effort: http://www.weather.com/weather/local/USMN0503?from=search_city
J
cheers
jk