Mapping and Drupal usability - an end-user (with pretensions!) view

My specific query is how to set about initialising the creation of a node through the use of a click on a Gmaps module generated map, but perhaps this highlights some wider issues about usability. I can see a metric shed-load of impressive work - flamboyant hat tip to webgeer, geodan; with the proposed Mapping API DEP etc - going into the backend on creating and expanding geo-functionality in Drupal, but not so much on the usability side.

The current phase (fad?) of mapping, led by Google and others focuses on interactivity and the possibility of simple collaboration. It depends on ease of use for its success, and the presentation of a transparent interface. The map isn't relegated to simply displaying someone else's data, but presents people with a new way to participate in something.To date, we don't have that in Drupal with maps, particularly at points of interaction between a Google map and content creation/filtering processes.

For example, and this circles back on my specific query, asking a site visitor to wade through the location module to display a node on a map is too byzantine (however great the actual functionality of the Location module is). The visitor's will to add the content, making a collaborative website valuable, comes from point and click loveliness. Take, for example, a site like Your History Here: it keeps the maps easy to use. However, I can't point to a Drupal-based example which leverages Drupal's excellence, but keeps an interactive map smart and easy to use. In many ways does little justice to the work put into providing the functions in the first place.

What are the critical usability challenges for the use of maps anyhow, and how can they be brought into general efforts to increase Drupal's overall usability?

Onwards -- Case.