Maps for publishing

Hi,

I need to create local city maps with retaurant and hotel icons on top.
These maps will be hosted on my website and people could download
and/or print them for a fee.

I read the Terms of use for the Google maps and the MSN Live and they
explicitely state that you can't use their maps or alter them for any
commercial use. Software like MS Mappoint have similar restrictions for
commercial use. Is there any software I can buy (or any other free city
maps out there) so I can create the city maps I need? I am not looking
for a dynamic mapping engine, I just need to display a static image of
a city map with the points of interest that I care about!

Thanks
Sam

samabdelmalek@gmail.com wrote:

I think you have to read the Google Maps license again: said license
permits *commercial use*, as long as the mapping service is free and
accessible to anyone.

I mean, you can build a site with Google maps and get some money out of
services other than mapping, i.e. advertising, or maybe a fee from
transactions (say, on-line hotel reservations) enabled by your site.

What you cannot do is to make people pay for viewing your maps.

One last thing: you can even restrict the access to your site by a
login/password authentication, as long as you don't make people pay (or
restrict otherwise) the possibility of people to register themselves.

Regards,

--------------------
Luca Morandini
www.lucamorandini.it
--------------------

Sam,

perhaps SVG maps could be a solution for you.
If you are using ESRI software then you can try MapViewSVG. There is a
free evaluation version and some examples on our homepage
http://www.mapviewsvg.com

Armin


samabdelmalek@gmail.com schrieb: