Internet offers great resources to anyone looking for maps, directions, global positioning and almost anything related to these online. The Online World brings to you a compilation of some of the best Internet resources if you have anything to do with maps.

Google Maps

Google Maps is a free online mapping application which is widely being used for many different purposes throughout the world. It can be a great resource for locating places and seeing real images instead of the plotted atlas maps. For example a distant satellite view of the map presents a true view of the world physical map. It is also possible to mark places and and create your own custom maps to locate your own areas of interest.

Google Earth

Google Earth is a virtual globe, an online world map and a geographic information program. It is owned by Google, however, its open for programmers and developers around the world to develop applications based on it. Google Earth offers imagery of the landscape of Earth combining satellite imagery, aerial photography and GIS 3D globe. The resolution offered varies from several pixels for a meter for some populous areas (e.g. Las Vegas, Melbourne etc.) whereas for uninhabited islands and oceans it may be 1px for 500 meters. Sometimes, you can also see your house!!

Open Street Map

Open street map is an open source project to create free, editable online map of the world created by contributions from the users. The maps are created using data from various sources including aerial photography, GPS devices and other free sources. In many respects this website is very similar to wikipedia, since it allows user edit and maintains a full history of changes.

Wikimapia

Wikimapia is an online world map and a satellite imaging system. It uses Google maps and wiki system to allow people to tag places on the world map as well as add information as notes. Currently wikimapia has around 9 million marked places and 200,000 registered users.