I like it but

a) my first thought was ‘oh, another Google maps mashup’ (I’m sorry if this sounds like it belittles the amount of effort you’ve put in it, I certainly don’t mean to, I love 43anythings)
b) no, I don’t think this should be the default; but certainly a main page link and maybe a preferences setting so those that want it can have it as default?

As for your other question “Should we add more to it – like letting you add a place to the site from the map?” – Empathic yes.

It would be great if this map could replace the one we have now on each of our main pages, so we could have our very own photo album in a map, and you could have a (master map) with eveyboby’s story’s and photo’s in it?

I will definately check this one out.

The map feature is great…one issue I’ve noticed is that from a certain zoom NYC and SF shows up, but not Seattle? I’m not sure how y’all determine this programatically but it’s confusing now.

Also, as Frankie mentioned, when you start getting to street level, seeing Seattle next to ‘the Space Needle’ makes thing more cluttered. I’m sure y’all are workin on that though.

Another usability issue, if you are zoomed in and click on a place, after going to that page and going back, you lose the map view you were on. Of course, you can open the locations in new tabs or windows, but if you forget, you lose your map view. Doh!

I love mashups, even if there are so many out there…some are really useful. This is a great way to discover new spots near your favorite haunts.

Just a layout thing… is there any way you could code it so that you can zoom in and out with the mouse wheel? For those who have wheels on their mice, it makes navigation much more fluid, you can go in at a place, zoom back out, move to another place, and zoom in again without having to press any knobs or pull any doohickys.

I like the idea alot though, keep up the good work.

I was wondering though: what drives at what zoom level a place has a marker on the map or not? For instance, when displaying the full map, there are no markers at all in Peru. But if you zoom close enough, the markers for Tarapoto and Chazuta appear. What drives this? Is it related to the zoom level on the location pages themselves?

i like it but… let’s make the map a little more funky. the current map we have looks simpler and cuter. (i know this may sound cosmetic and you did great work on the function, but this is something we’ll look at most of the time on this site!)