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I'm planning a trip to Iceland which involves a lot of research to gather information from different sources (mainly blogs, but also travel guides and other).

The problem with Iceland is that almost all tourist attractions are natural and not all are indicated properly. For instance, if I want to go to "Hellulaug" (because I've seen some interesting pictures), I have some work to find where exactly it is located (there are no maps that mark it with precision and I don't have enought time during the trip to find it).

Given this, at the beginning I have started to put POIs (Points of Interest) in a Google Maps Engine but soon I've reached its limits: only 3 layers and only 20 personalized points per layer. So, I'm wondering if there is a planning tool or online map that allows to add POIs into a map (existent or new ones) without limit and free.

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Try My Maps, the successor to My Places, and formerly called Google Maps Engine Lite/Pro. The free version allows up to 3 layers of 500 points each, a total of 1,500, or you can upgrade to the Pro version for 10 x 2,000 = 20,000.

Promotional demo video here, and as a sample, here's my little map of wineries around Melbourne.

(Disclaimer: My Maps is one of the products I've worked on at Google.)

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  • Sorry, I've changed my question. Of course, when I wrote "Google Maps My Places" I was talking about Google Maps Engine. My mistake. When you use GME, only the first 20 points in each layer can be personalized (i.e. you can put a different icon). I need this feature in order to distinguish a petrol station from a view point at a glance.
    – Ivan
    Jan 28, 2014 at 13:37
  • You can style by categories: just give petrol stations and view points different attributes, then "Style by data column" using that attribute. See support.google.com/mapsenginelite/answer/3024931?hl=en
    – lambshaanxy
    Jan 28, 2014 at 22:14
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You could try OpenStreetMaps (OSM). I don't know if it is accurate (Haven't been to Iceland yet :( ), but it has a node for Hellulaug. OSM is a wiki, so the accuracy of the maps provided are depending on the region. Where I live I fully rely an OSM above Google Maps, since it is simply more accurate. Road improvements are typically updated with in a week. There is probably a large community of OSM users that make this possible. Last year I have been to Flores in the Acores, which might be comparable with Iceland in terms of being remote and OSM coverage there was not as detailed as mainland Europe, but still quite useful.

You could use OSM to capture POI as nodes. By doing so you improve the quality of OSM maps for Iceland. Another benefit is that if you own a garmin gps unit, you can download/upload maps on your GPS. This interoperability probably is also key in the accuracy. I often upload trails to OSM, so I can later download it again. Others benefit from this as much as I benefit from downloading others trails.

I have you have mobile internet coverage another tool I can recommend is Swarm. It is actually a social media tool that allows you to share you position with friends. However it is integrated with Foursquare and when you check in with Swarm, you'll get the spots people checked in earlier in the proximity. It is an indirect way to locate interesting POI in the neighbourhood, but I use it often. Again, the quality and accuracy of the POI depends on the number of users in that area. If it is a touristic spot, your chances are good.

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Try Mapbox.. Its free and has more styling features than google maps lite.. https://www.mapbox.com/

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