I work full-time building custom Google Maps-based projects, so my first thought was to compare them. While this seems very nicely done, there's little in it that you couldn't do with the Google Maps API. Some of the default settings are more nicely chosen, though.

BTW, if you need a freelancer to help on your project, feel free to contact me.

Thanks! Unfortunately it's an academic thing so we're not hiring any outside help.

I too am doing research work using the google maps api (and their very good Google Distance API) and find there to be no real advantage in this one, or any feature that I don't see in the Google API, the maps api has been wonderful to work with.

One huge advantage is that unlike Google Maps it is Open Source.