Recently, I set about to add a map page to Jobs.CodeBetter.Com, with markers so you can geographically explore the jobs posted over there.  As more jobs are posted to the site, this should be a good way to sift through them all and find the one in your neck of the woods.  You can try it out here.

I am totally blown away by the Google Maps API, the documentation, the performance, and the overall development experience.  This API  to me represents everything that is right with current Web UI tier development. 

What about Virtual Earth and  MapPoint Web Services?
A while back, I posted some code and highly praised Microsoft's Map Point Web Service.  Although my initial experience with MapPoint was good, my enthusiasm with the application I developed quickly evaporated.  It was slow, clumsy and hard to maintain.  Much of the map panning and navigation controls had to be written by hand... back then there were no out of the box controls to simply add to the map.   With MapPoint, I had to roll my own, which led to browser inconsistencies, and various and sundry bugs that seem to accompany any big client JavaScript code I write.  When we were faced with the decision of licensing the MapPoint web service, we decided against it because of the prohibitive cost.

Many of these problems have been addressed with Virtual Earth.  It appears that you can get the same or better end-user experience (here's a nice comparison of VirtualEarth versus GoogleMaps from a users' perspective)...  There's a nice Getting Started page here, and and Interactive SDK here.  

I'm not entirely convinced that they've honed the developer experience to the point that Google has. For one thing, it took me a half an hour to simply find licensing information, and when I did, it came from a developer's blog (Chandu announced a licensing model to allow sites to freely use the service.), not the Virtual Earth site itself.  To make things worse, you may find yourself thoroughly confused if you end up on the other Virtual Earth SDK on the Microsoft site. To me this is typifies the difference between doing things the Microsoft way (mired in marketing goo with complex licensing and confusing documentation)  versus the Google way (simple, easy to understand and use).

 -Brendan