ESRI has come out with a beta version of what it called ArcWeb Explorer. There’s no mention of it anywhere on its website but DirectionsMag has a review of it. At present it seems to be a standard web mapping site that allows users to pan, zoom and find locations. Panning and zooming now appears a little awkward compared to something like Google Local. The site allows the user to find a number of locations at once using an Excel xls file but the geocoder doesn’t seem to work for Canada yet. The maps seem to use a geographic projection. Map styles can be changed - although the choice is limited. This being a beta version, let’s hope that more is coming.