One of the things on my map wishlist (and the to blog about list) for a long time has been finding maps on the map.

Say what?

There are many venues that are gigantic. Think the Smithsonian’s Udvar-Hazy Center, Giants Stadium, the Mall of America, Cedar Point amusement park or Disney World. Places like this usually publish maps online. I’ve wanted to be able to find those maps when I zoom in to a street map. Yahoo! has launched a protoype that begins to make that a reality.

Here’s a map of the National Mall with a tourist friendly map layered on top. This map of Philadelphia International Airport identifies the different terminals. The map below plots the Freedom Trail on to the streets of Boston.

The Yahoo! approach is labor intensive. Maps are aligned so that the images line up with the underlying map. It’s the right long-term solution, but it’s less scalable than I was envisioning.

It would be much easier to provide a map icon link on top of each venue. This would have the added benefit of allowing users to get additional details, such as which airlines fly out of which terminal.

More on: maps, Yahoo!