Some of you may remember that we covered Geoportail, the French mapping service on the main news pages. Well version 2 has just gone into Beta and here, exclusively for PisteHors readers, is a link to go try it out

http://visubeta.geoportail.fr/

After the early problems everything seems to runs smoothly and the interface is better. It still doesn’t let you overlay routes and waypoints like Google Earth but it does give you access to 1:25,000 series maps which is great for trip planning. The major difference with Google is that Geoportail’s photographs come from the IGN’s planes whereas Google Eart uses satellite imagery.

http://pistehors.com/news/ski/comments/goportail-google-earth-rival-is-french-fried/