Google Fusion Tables can handle huge amounts of data -- and seem designed for that. But a great little secret is that they're fantastic for making fast maps. Even little ones.
And it's surprisingly easy.
At WNYC, we used fusion tables for this quickie map of 63 taxi relief stands. My colleague Jim Colgan whipped together these plowed-streets maps (including the one below) from listeners' texted-in reports -- while he was sick in bed!
Some reasons we've been drawn to mapping with Google Fusion Tables:
Simple uploads. All you need is a comma-separated table (csv) or a spreadsheet made in Excel or Google Docs. Each "point" goes on a row. If you have even basic Excel skills, you're more than ready to go.
Embedded geocoding. Put addresses in one of your columns, and Google will geocode them for you -- doing the work of finding the latitude and longitude for your pin. If you already have the coordinates, that's fine, too. Here's the help page on this for more.
Customizable icons. You can designate one of your columns as the icon column, and use this map of available icons to pick names to put in that column for each point There are some really clear instructions for this.
Easy embeds. Zoom and position the map as you like it and then click the "Get Link" button for a link to what you see. Or click the blue "Get embeddable link" link to get the embed code. (Design note to Google folks: It's confusing that one of these is a button and one is an html link!)
Easy updates. You can add more data points easily, either with additional uploads or just typing your additions or fixes in your browser.
Privacy controls. As with other Google products, you can click the "Share" button to control who can view and/or edit each table and map -- which is really nice for working in teams.
News maps on news time. That's been working for us.
Update: Jim Colgan, who put together the snowplow map, talks about how he did it with the folks at Mobile Commons, who run the platform we use for texting projects.