South Africa is on the (Google) Map

I was thinking about how cool it would be if Google Maps covered South Africa and how it must make sense to do that and then I came across this post on Cowboys and Engines referencing this post on Cherryflava. It turns out South Africa is being covered by Google Maps after all! The detail isn’t fantastic yet (it seems that only major roads are detailed at the moment) but this is a great start. Here is a map of the Norwood (in Johannesburg) area:

Hopefully much more detail will be added in time. One of the advantages of having coverage by Google Maps is that businesses can add markers pointing to their location on the map. This enables people to find you that much easier and even get directions to your door.

I saw that Mladen, one of the guys at Wizardworx (this blog’s host), commented on Cherryflava that Microsoft’s Live Local has been doing this for a little while now and that the coverage there is apparently better. That may be but I battled to even find a map of anything on the service. All I got was an overly simplistic search form that didn’t give me any results. So Mladen, if you could point me in the right direction here?

Tags: google maps, live local, map, south africa, johannesburg, norwood