You could put some markers on a Google Map (and that's alright), but is that really gonna go with your design, or is it really going to tell the story you want your users to see? I'll talk about how you can use the OpenLayers module and other modules to make good looking and interesting maps in Drupal.

You can download the HTML/JS presentation and Drupal demo sites (D6 and D7) here:
https://github.com/zzolo/beautiful_maps_dcchi2011

Audio is available here: http://www.archive.org/details/MakingBeautifulMapsInDrupal