I’ve looked at Google’s map API, which is all javascript and terribly slow on the iPhone. I then tried using the link option available at maps.google.com. That is fast but I can’t see having much control over it. It also displays a little search box at the top of the map. Google’s API says you must use maps in a website, which the iPhone isn’t. I’m not sure about licensing for maps.google.com.
Urbanspoon’s scope option does everything I want with maps in regards to displaying nearby businesses based on your location. Given the limited set of tools available for Google maps without mapkit, I don’t know how they are doing it. It looks as though they have somehow integrated with mapkit. Clicking an annotation shows the callout and another click pushes a new view with details from that pin. Any ideas how this can be done?
— EDIT —
Just to be clear, mapkit doesn’t display surrounding businesses. That’s the crux of the problem and I’m not sure how Urbanspoon got past it.
You can also use the Google AJAX Search API: http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxsearch/
It’s a Javascript library, but for Flash, and other Non-Javascript environments, the API exposes a raw RESTful interface that returns JSON encoded results.
And within this API, what you want is the ‘Local Search’ if you are looking for nearby businesses based on the location.