Support searching by location

[zaknelson]

For example, searching for "Washington" should bring up the map with Washington on it.

Currently investigating geocoding options:

• Nominatim - Does not support fuzzy search for misspellings
• cloudmade - Incomplete data (e.g. searching for Washington doesn't bring up the state, but does bring up a couple of cities).
• MapBox - Works pretty well for coarse queries but for fine grain searches, like smaller towns and natural features (e,g, Yosemite) don't work. Also, hard to tell if fuzzy search works, but in demo it doesn't.
• geocod.io - Needs a very specific address in order provide relevant results, e.g. Washington return anything. Also no international support.
• Google Maps - Works pretty well, but there are some issues. Searching for Washington, from Washington state brings up DC.
• Google Places - Would require two API calls in order to get a location, but works pretty well. Would require a "Powered by Google" logo.
• smartystreets - Doesn't handle search by state. No international support.
• GovMapper - Seems to be US only and demoes don't work.

[zaknelson]

I ended up using Google Map's geocoding API.

Still an open question as to whether OSM will be an option in the future. There are high quality maps, e.g. MapBox, but none of the geocoding APIs seem to be on par with Google's offerings (which you have to use with Google Maps).

Maybe the best solution for now is to use Google Maps, but contribute GPX trails back to OSM.