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For Japan, ZENRIN is company you should be looking for. http://www.zenrin.co.jp/english/index.html

You could try ZoomInfo.

Also, Google has enterprise licensing agreements for its engine that will allow you to have a local cache, use it in your own private apps and use it without attribution.

Maps or images?

For maps depending on what you want to do with them, http://www.openstreetmap.org/ might be of use.

If you are after images in Australia then there is http://www.nearmap.com/

Try http://www.terraserver.com/ , I know their COO , Brian Funk – great guy and they supply maps for movies, multimedia, etc.

I used to work for Map Resources when I was in high school. It’s vector based stuff, not sat images. Let me know if you want me to introduce you to the owners. www.mapresources.com

Everyblock’s custom/OSS mapping stack (http://blog.everyblock.com/2008/feb/18/maps/) might be of interest. But they use government data, so you’d need different data suppliers for non-US cities.

http://www.axismaps.com/ they look like modern day cartographers/artists. My bet is they could help.

If you want to create a lot of maps and/or you’d like a lot of control over them, it might make sense to get a copy of something like ArcInfo http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcinfo/index.html This isn’t a product for the causal user, but it can produce some great results.

Another potentially good approach would be to find a shop that specializes in custom maps (a Google search for this term yields a lot of promising sources). I don’t have one to recommend to you, since we have an in-house department that does all our cartography, but there are a lot of other capable shops out there.

Try http://www.ammap.com/ - Its flash though … gives you great control over the map

Hey Jason, Viewranger might help you, even though they focus on outdoor, they have some pretty good city data as well.

Polymaps and CloudMade might be able to help you with what you’re trying to do. (Example Street Map)

I second the suggestion of openstreetmap.org and will add in a new one: http://mapbox.com/

National Geographic: http://www.natgeomaps.com

http://www.delorme.com/

Has the data, but I have no idea how they package or license it.

Do you want maps or map data? You note you want maps like MapQuest, Google, etc. Their maps typically originate from rendering the map data (vectors) from other vendors. Two of the large vendors of map data are Navteq (navteq.com) an Tele Atlas. There are others. Google has recently (2008) created their own core map data they may have put the data in the public domain (I don’t know – rumors).

What about getting the data from the providers themselves? In case you didn’t know this, Google, Mapquest etc don’t actually own the mapping data. They get it from two major companies, NAVTEQ (owned by Nokia) and TeleAtlas (owned by TomTom). Try contacting one of them. At most they may require copyright notices, though I haven’t once seen that on my Garmin (they use NAVTEQ maps).

Although I would think getting that data would be quite expensive. I should also clarify that many countries such as China don’t allow foreign counties to map them, so you’d have to find local mapping companies.

If you’re interested in FREE , try http://www.openstreetmap.org. Very clean maps similar to google, but you will need to convert them so they are editable in illustrator. (not difficult)

They have a wiki that will walk you through the process.

Enjoy.

I think you should take a look at openstreetmap.org There you can get the vector data under a free license, CC-BY-SA in this case. You can either use the data to render your own map tiles with the style you want to have (and serve them as a so called slippymap like e.g. Google does) or you can also use the map data in tools like Adobe Illustrator to create specific maps styled by hand.

Check ESRI ArcGIS. You may want to tap your local research libraries for assistance.

http://library.uic.edu/home/collections/maps-and-geographic-information-systems

www.randmcnally.com has a good mapping service.

Not for Tourists has a ton of PDFs for download – I’m pretty sure they’re editable PDFS , but I can find out for sure.

https://www.notfortourists.com/shopViewItems.aspx?catID=PDFs

I’d suggest OSM data www.openstreetmap.org – rendered with Mapnik www.mapnik.org via the Cairo backend www.cairo-graphics.org

Might be pain to setup – but it works.

openstreetmap.org, Go to Export tab, export as SVG . Easy as that.

Development Seed has developed beautiful looking tilesets using Mapbox . For use with OpenStreetMap.

Not trying to be cynical, but does this have anything to do with the Google Maps images on your Customer Wall? I always wondered if that was an approved use of their maps.

My favorite tool is Geoserver and Postgresql with PostGIS. Many of my colleagues like Map Server. Bring your own data – OSM data welcome.

Jason, have a look at Esri, one of the biggest players in GIS . Check out their page about data: http://www.esri.com/data/find-data.html but I’d suggest you to get in touch with them if you need more detailed data or even appliances that have the data loaded already.

Jason, Please see the message that I sent to your e-mail address. I have been building digital maps and/or in the industry for over six years. Thanks, Ivan

I met some guys who work here while traveling. I don’t know if they have exactly what you’re looking for, but they are a mapping company.

http://digitalglobe.com/

I can’t point you in the right direction without more information.

I’d first want to verify that you require vectors in-hand (typically associated with more cost/work/hassle) or if a pre-processed approach using image tiles (with cartography that’s ready to go) can actually meet your needs. If vectors, I’d need to know if you require raw vector data or a ready-made vector product.

If this isn’t the right place for an explanation of the project, I can do a quick phone call.

Jason, you should try www.decarta.com. They are the best choice for a whitelabelled mapping solution. Pretty solid tech, since google maps was on decarta’s platform back when google maps started. And they have more coverage(including China). For the record, I don’t work there, but I did interview with them.

http://www.openstreetmap.org/ obviously!

Jason,

I’d think twice before using OpenStreetMap. It’s not as good as some of the zealots would have you believe and there’s a lot of data quality issues. Here’s a few blog posts I found about some of the issues:

http://www.41latitude.com/post/1310985699/openstreetmap-critique http://www.41latitude.com/post/1349685626/openstreetmap-critique-2

Might check out http://market.weogeo.com/

Have you looked at the USGS ? That is primarily all they do. http://www.usgs.gov/pubprod/

http://www.bjdesign.com/

Sorry to jump on this, but does anyone know of a similar kind of resource for country outlines by lat and lon in any pseudo-CSV format?

I am looking for rough outlines and the data I have found so far is too detailed (think Natural Earth Data, etc.). All I am trying to do is generate a cartogram from outlines so a very simple bounding polygon is all I require.

It also seems to be a struggle to find an export by country with just lat/lon points rather than a shapefile or similar.

Thanks!

I have been looking for city vector maps for years and here is what I know – the mapping companies that own them will never give you a vector image which you can edit yourself – because its like giving away their secret sauce – and their sole souce of revenue. Our agency ended up drawing a master vector map and using this for every subsequent project.

Jason. I know you are looking for Vector source for maps, but here is great post from today on how Google has updated the styling of their maps to make them more readable.

http://www.41latitude.com/post/2072504768/google-maps-label-readability

Might be useful tips for mapping plans.

I would try reaching out to the travel guild companies (Lonely Planet, Fodor’s, Frommers, Rough, Moon, etc). Maybe they’d consider licensing their content.

I’m suprised no one has mentioned ESRI … Check out their ArcGIS.com site…