No! Absolutley not.
We've had several people ask this question over the past day or two, so it seems like a good topic to cover in a forum post since there are probably others with the same question.
AWhere can map data for anywhere in the world; it is in no way tailored specifically for, nor designed to work only with, U.S. data. You will find, however, that there is generally much more prepared, spatial data available out there for the U.S., Canada (and other ‘more developed’ regions) compared to other regions of the world…at least that which is publicly accessible. But, that limitation only speaks to data availability, not to AWhere’s capabilty. Click on this first webpage link below and then click on the ‘Screenshots’ tab in the middle of the webpage…browse some of those sample map images, you’ll see that some of them are from various places around the world - http://www.awhere.com/Products/AWherePro.aspx
Also, you might check out this page on our website (AWhere’s development actually got its start in Africa, in fact…just to give you a feel of our ‘international’ background) - http://www.awhere.com/Solutions/InternationalReliefAndDev.aspx
Do we (AWhere) have spatial data available for areas outside the U.S.? - Yes, and it is freely available to our licensed users. Click here to read more about that, and how to download our data sets.
Mapping Addresses - If you are asking the question of whether or not AWhere can map (plot) addresses outside of the U.S....the answer again is Yes, assuming that you can geo-code the addresses. The first requirement when mapping addresses is to Geo-code them (regardless of whether the address is in the US, or elsewhere in the world). Geo-coding an address assigns a latitude and longitude to the address (i.e. it gives the address 'geographic' reference). Geo-coding is something that AWhere, itself, does not do, but you can use several free on-line services to geo-code (e.g. http://www.batchgeocode.com/ ). After geo-coding, you would then bring the results of your geo-coding (the lat/longs) into AWhere in order to map those locations. Now, depending on where in the world your addresses are located, that will determine how precisely the Geo-coding process can assign a latitude and longitude for each address. Generally, addresses in the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe can be geo-coded with much more precision than in other places in the world (currently, that is...it will improve over time). That is, for an address in the U.S. or Canada, the lat/long will probably be almost exactly right at the actual ‘on-the-ground’ address location, whereas in other regions (for example, some regions of South America, Africa, Asia, etc), the lat/long coordinate might only be given for the center of the town or the center of the postal code area that is provided for the address…and not for the actual ‘on-the-ground’ address location. But again, this is a result of the limitation of the currently available geo-coding tools that are out there, not a limitation within AWhere..whatever lat/long coordinates you give AWhere, it can map it. Click here to read more about mapping addresses using AWhere.