Events sites are great, automatic mapping is even cooler, but here’s something developers have overlooked:
When someone posts the location for an event, don’t assume it’s given as a well-formed street address. If the location is informal, weird things will happen, and neither the poster nor the visitor is likely to know why.
An example: SantaCruzLive.com. Their maps are provided by MapsOnUs, which gets confused by “321 Main St. on Beach Hill.”
Another: MeetUp.com. MapQuest isn’t quite smart enough to understand “corner of” as being an intersection.
If the field has to be a valid postal address, make sure to inform the user. Even better: why not poll the map service during validation? :)
