Champlain recently got a Summer of Code student to work on getting the map rendered locally [1] (using OpenStreetMap xml data) as opposed to downloading the pre-rendered tiles as is currently being done. If it works out well, would it be a good idea to use it in our clock applet and timezone selection widgets?
Cheers, Debarshi
[1] http://socghop.appspot.com/student_project/show/google/gsoc2009/gnome/t12402...