I noticed that an old post became relatively popular, the one called “The Web - past, present and future“, looking mostly at different solutions for the future web, and touching lightly on what others have said. Today I instead describe some of my own thoughts about the future of the web - with 3D applications such as Google Earth and Second Life, vertical search engines such as momondo, Ziggs and SimplyHired, and online applications like for example BudgetPulse and LabPixies helping you replace old offline applications with online equivalents.

Some keywords for the future as I see it are Usability, Attitude, Flexibility and Creativity. What is missing most now is the Usability, and looking at the average web 2.0 application you can easily see many flaws - some of which I’ll consider here later. For some testing, I joined a few of the new networks and similar ‘Web 2.0′ sites, such as yumondo, tried some online tools like udutu, while wondering how those names suddenly became so popular - but at the same time positive about the globalised feeling and relaxed attitude it shows for names.

I’ll write more about my findings here later - for now I can say that many of the sites have slow loading, that it’s often difficult or impossible to bookmark search results and similar, and that many of the designers have tried being too cool and forgot that someone should be able to use the site as well…

Since I’m creating a travel section of this site, I decided it could be interesting to make research on some of the mapping API’s out there, with Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps and MS MapPoint being the obvious first candidates. These candidates are soon reduced to two when I look at MSN Maps, and especially the navigation and general feel of this application disheartens me, thereby leaving two of the giants as candidates.

Both Yahoo! and Google have extensive documentation and help for their mapping API’s, which of course helps when developing - but I’ve often found that smaller startups can have more interesting products, leading to a further search for mapping tools. The first API I find in this quick search is ZoomIn, another free system which reminds of the others, but feels a bit slow at the first look - and while looking around at their site it hits me with quite a few bad links which of course renders a bad feeling.

Moving on, I found MapQuest and the OpenAPI used for their service, including geocoding, routing, seamless movements in the map and a few other interesting features. Another option I found while looking around was MultiMap, which targets business clients and have many high profile clients.

With the options above, I started testing the interfaces with geocoding and to see if they have simple dragging, zooming and other features which are essential for a usable interface. I found that MapQuest, Google maps, MultiMap and Yahoo! were the most friendly and decided to go on with those.

In a next post I’ll give short tutorials for each api after some testing - and comment on how simple each them are. My progress can be seen under my travel section where I started with a WordPress plug-in for Google maps, and will continue next with a London map from Yahoo! maps.

Happy mapping!