TECHKNOW: State of the art - MULTIMAP.COM

Among the web's most successful ventures to date have been search engines, which astutely guide disorientated netizens through the back streets of cyberspace.

By comparison, the web's terrestrial map services remain clumsy and mundane in the way they squire you from A to B. But they're working on it.

To glimpse the road under construction, do a wide detour around the ineptly designed www.streetmap. co.uk and head instead for multimap.com, which claims to be one of the UK's 10 most visited sites and which makes its money by running advertisements and leasing services to others.