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Best Online Mapping Site?
bbulzibar asks: "I've been using MapQuest most of my life, but now as my mind is slowly expanding, I want to see if Yahoo! Maps is a better service for driving directions. According to one article I have read, Yahoo! is better at displaying maps, but what about calculating directions? Does anyone have any experience with differences? For example, Yahoo! and MapQuest give differing routes to go from Bloomington, IN to Madison, WI." I particularly like MapBlast's "Line Drive" direction style -- what's your favorite online mapping software?
i've always used mapquest. Hasn't failed me yet.
But that's just in the U.S. and Canada.
In other countries I find that simply stopping to ask directions is faster and more reliable than trying to figure out a map or get some software to figure out the route.
I've caught them in exactly two errors in four or five years of regular use. I'd gladly pay a monthly membership fee for them if they weren't a free service. (SHHHHH!!! Don't tell them.) ;>
Catherine
need a mapping program? I never leave the green glow of /.
"I've been using MapQuest most of my life,
HOLY SHIT do I feel old.
National Geographic's "Topo!" is my mapping weapon of choice.
Somewhere between 2 and 3(or similar) on the zoom scales. 2 is just a tad too close, you click 3 and BAM you get the whole town. No neighborhood street names or other smaller details to help guide you on that last mile. Sure I could print directions or two maps, but it's still very annoying.
It would nice to be able to click on a particular street name or other landmark and have it 'stick' through zoom levels.
Yahoo(and Some of the others also wack out my neighborhood map. I live 2 houses from the county line and Yahoo breaks my street on the county line putting the ends 200 m apart. It would cause somebody using it for directions to my house to drive about a mile out of the way if coming from the other county.
Oh yeah, and why is the push pin marker on the wrong side of the street 80% of the time?
All I can say about Yahoo driving directions is, do NOT trust them. I've put in simple A to B addresses and gotten way off the wall directions. As a traveling pc tech, this is a royal pain in the ass. If I knew how to get to these places to begin with, I wouldn't use Yahoo driving directions at all. In the LA area, do not trust them... I really can't emphasize that enough.
MapQuest has always been good to me except 1 occation when trying to find a date's house for the first time :/ bummer. You could also try Microsoft's Streets and Trips. It works great with my GPS system :)
Something I have been looking for is a mapping site that will let me plot a route - say from 42nd and Madison to 14th and 6th - as I would walk it, not as a car would have to drive it (that is, ignore one way streets and such). Generally, because I want to find out how far I have to walk to get to a meeting or something.
Extra credit would be if I could draw a diagonal line through a park (since I can cut through). Or if it estimated walking time the way it done driving time.
Any ideas?
warning: epoll_wait is not implemented and will always fail
Multimap is my favourite.
"I've been using MapQuest most of my life..."
I knew there were a lot of kids on slashdot, but damn... MapQuest's site has only been around since 1996!
Isn't maps.yahoo.com powered by mapquest?
While working as a dispatcher covering the state of Michigan, I used Mapquest. I only fell back to Yahoo Maps when mapquest failed to return an address. (Which it did on occasion.)
From personal experience on the west coast and midwest, I can say that I will never use Yahoo maps again. The third time getting lost did it for me. Mapquest has not let me down yet.
Sometimes, one or another of them is updated sooner with regards to road work. It's good to consult both of them to see if they agree on a route, and if they don't, it's a good idea to find out why-- don't just take the shorter route because you may find out there's a 100 mile detour that you missed, or something of the sort.
Yes, this has happened to me.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
I mapped out a route from Here to Timbuktu and Mapquest came out with the shortest route, therefore I conclude that Mapquest is better. QED
I've found that Yahoo is better at finding roads when I don't have the complete information (i.e. no zip code). I've tried a few times to find an address in mapquest, only to give up and find it instantly in yahoo maps.
I'm sure there are several examples going the other way as well. In any event, its always better to have several competing services than one monopolistic non-innovative service.
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
In the UK try Streetmap or Multimap. IMHO UK Yahoo maps isn't very good.
Read Epic the first RPG novel.
Microsoft does the best job. MapPoint as an application or through the web (http://mappoint.msn.com/) works best.
MapBlast has always produced easier-to-read maps and better quality directions, in my experience. Sadly, their availability waivered for a while there (presumably financial/business model difficulties), and at some point they got bought by ... M$. But you can still type in mapblast.com, it just points to a mapping page on MSN, which, at least so far, retains most of the quality that I always appreciated.
i rarely use mapquest. maybe i'm just unlucky, but every time i've tried to use mapquest, i've gotten driving directions like this:
Take the exit
or
Turn left on unnamed street
Turn right on unnamed byway
it never fails. perhaps i'm not going to approved places or something, but it's frustrating.
yes this will probably get me flamed to hell...
but i love microsoft's mappoint. it has pretty good maps and shows where theres construction on roads and the time periods the construction goes through. (i.e. there is construction for the next 20 miles on i-40 east from august 2, 2002 to october 4, 2004) and it has an easy to use interface, but i haven't tried it with anything but IE so it will probably kill mozilla or something.
i've also used expedia.com which i have found to be horrible, and i used to use mapquest on a regular basis but that was before i found that it would get me lost when in town and then when it sent me 150 miles out of the way when going to toronto.
wheee mappoint!
Which is better?
A) A monopoly service that works exceptionally well
B) Several competing services that don't work very well
C) Sex with a mare
About 2 out of 3 times I use mapquest it places the spot on the map about .5 to 2 miles away from where it actually is. I find it so unreliable as to be useless. The worst one was when I was trying to find a fedex box given the address on the fedex web site. Mapquest 'located' the box in the middle of a residential area. I wasted half an hour driving around looking for it. The actual box was 2 miles away.
They both get their maps from NavTech. I'm surprised they'd give a different result.
I always amused by the direction that Navtech would give for one path a couple blocks from home. It would direct me over the barrier between the N & S lanes of a road. Doubly Ironic that my wife worked for NavTech at the time.
Other than that, I use mapquest more often than not, just out of habit.
Multimap has great detail for pinpointing addresses on a map....but it can only handle directions in mainland GB.
Don't kid yourself. They all use the same backend databases (i.e., NavTech) and direction-finders. The only difference you are likely to find is in the interface, and how they choose to present the maps, directions, information. That is where they are different.
Not for the U.S., but check this out.
Don't visit Rhode Island unless you want directions like:
"Go up this street to where the jewlery store burned down, take a left onto 6 and get off near where the old onramp used to be, then head towards Fort Thunder, which is now a Stop and Shop"
Seriously, that's how we give directions here. I didn't believe it until I caught myself doing it.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
I don't usually use a mapping program, as I ask the person/business at the destination how to get there. But my brother had a little misfortune with mapquest a couple monts ago when he printed out directions without looking at them first. It was in rural Minnesota, and about half way there, it gave him the direction to go west 1.7 miles on a certain street, then turn left. It gave no street name, nor was there an weasy way to find out what it was. He just drove down each street that seemed to be abbout the right distance away. I don't expect it to know directions everywhere, but it should tell you if it doesn't know something before you use it. Just my opinion.
warning: This post is likely to contain gobs of dripping sarcasm. Consume at your own risk.
In the UK: My vote is for Line Drive on Mapblast for directions, and streetmap.co.uk for er, street-type maps.
Line Drive is surprisingly accurate (to 1/10 mile) if you reset your mileometer at every turning and reference point, and follow the distances. But who does that? (A: me, I'm a navigational klutz and need all the help I can get)... MapKlutz Hint: Do a return journey route too...
...Oh, and MS bought Mapblast, so it sucks now (sorry, forget where I was for a minute!)
I personally like Yahoo! maps. It's really funny, because i don't like Yahoo! at all in general. For their maps is the only reason why i go there. Usually i still crack open an actual physical map and keep several in the car just in case there is a problem on the way. I think it works out quite well.
-=gabe2=- macbook dual 2.0
I hope I don't get modded down into oblivion, but I really like Microsoft Streets and Trips. I have the 2002 edition that came with Microsoft Works Suite. Online maps are slow (I'm on modem) and they don't feel right. I get the feeling that they are limited to certain rectangles. With S&T, I can get the feel for the whole map. I can scroll to the edges just as easy/fast as I would scroll on a web page or spreadsheet. From the routes I've gotten from around my area, I can't say either (Yahoo, MapQuest, S&T) is any better than the other. For example, they all insist on me taking highways, even if it takes longer to get there (yes, I know about scenic, shorter, faster,etc, but it didn't make much of a difference)
Robert Bindler
A Computer Science student's views on technology.
microsoft did to it what they did to hotmail.
I can count to 1023 on my hands. Ask me about #132.
-- I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous
We all claim to be geeks and nerds, but so far there hasn't been a single comment in regards to the implications of the route search algorithms to the traveling salesman problem.
This place isn't for geeks anymore, I guess.
My preferred site is www.mapsonus.com, which uses data from TeleAtlas North America (aka TANA, formerly Etak).
A few years ago, I was told by someone in the know that TANA tended to be more accurate in actually knowing where a given location was, while NavTech was better at turn-by-turn directions. No idea where MapQuest fits in (at the time, I thought they used NavTech).
IMHO, it's worth checking several sources to triangulate. Just check the fine print on the generated maps, to ensure that you're not looking at two presentations of the same data.
MapQuest for Directions and Map Point for maps... Both are good for different reasons :)
Sabre
a few times yahoo has gotten me lost, but the way they produce maps has changed in the last year...actually they were powered by mapquest originally... on long trips i usually print out both
wud
I just moved to Cincinnati so I've been using map websites almost every day. Yahoo! has the big advantage of integrating the Yellow Pages with their mapping program, so you don't have to type in the address like you do with Mapquest...
I've found that Yahoo! has a tendency to map the the shortest distance as the crow flies, which almost inevitably turns out to be a long drive than Mapquest, which tends to get you to a freeway faster. Since I live next to a major freeway most trips are faster by using it instead of sticking to back roads.
But since I'm new to the area the Yahoo! routes teach me the geography better, so I choose Mapquest when I'm in a pinch and Yahoo! when I have time to explore.
sig.
Mapquest's directions are really flaky for two reasons:
.25 miles." which result in .25 being a brick retaining wall that was not passable. Yahoo Maps saved the day, telling me to go three miles further and turn Right...
1: Mapquest has so kindly given you miles in the instructions like this:" Take exit 109 and turn Right
2: On a trip to houston, Mapquest turned a simple trip into a moneymaking opportunity hitting every goddamned toll booth between us and our destination. When we got to the location, we were asked "Why didn't you take I-10 and exit this highway and take this exit?"
Conclusion: mapquest sucks.
The Nero Mapping service, their "last measure" feature is really useful. Try it today
;).
NERO MAPPING SERIVCE
Last measure service
I love MSN best for maps because it is the only one I've found that lets me expand the map display to actually use the resolution of my monitor instead of scrolling the postage stamp map around.
Syntax error: loose != lose, affect != effect, then!=than
Uh oh, he's posting to /.
NetNanny must be on the blink again.
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
Some friends of mine and I went to just for laughs this summer, he's done to the same area of the city before and always used MapQuest.
This time, he used Yahoo! maps, my gawd, the directions had us go basically in a big circle at one point, involved a lot more direction changes and small capacity streets, in general adding bout an hour to the trip.
The MapQuest instructions, like 3 turns mostly highway to highway, and ONLY on main streets, we used them on the way back, WAY faster, and on the way back there was actually a lot more traffic because of the shows letting out.
DISCLAIMER: Montreal, QC, Canada is not the easiest city to get around in in the first place like most big citys its built up, out, and round and round so the streets are a mess.
Jesus saves, everyone else takes full damage from the fireball.
The accuracy of the directions from each varies. I've seen both produce better results than the other for different routes. They usually both follow the same general directions though. Yahoo's maps are easier read when zoomed in close, since they only include side streets that are relevant to the route you're taking. Mapquest's tend to look cluttered. Yahoo also deosn't overstate the time it's takes to get there as much. In Mapquest's time estimates it's seems like they assumae you're going to stop at every gas station along the way and stick around for twenty minutes. Yahoo more resembles the actual driving time. Mapquest's instructions though, are more to the point. Yahoo seems to make merging from one expressway to another an eight step process, and reading all those details, while in an unfamiliar area, going 75 can be a bit dangerous. I usually run both. Print a main page with yahoo's map and mapquest's directions. And another with Yahoo's directions in case I miss something.
or I don't have a car you insensitive clod!
Can I get an eye poke?
Dog House Forum
I like Rand Mcnally's site. In my experience it often gives more detailed descriptions than Mapquest. Oh and I used Mapblast too before it became a wholly owned subsidiary of the underworld.
-You may license this sig for only $6.99.
I got directions from Mapquest last winter for a drive from Chicago, IL to Jackson, WY by way of Minneapolis, MN. All in all a beautiful drive through some amazing country. The only problem was that the route had me driving through Yellowstone, which, as I unfortunately discovered, is closed during the winter. Now, I did get to see some amazing scenery, and there was a cool little bar right at the point where the road terminated for the season, but the detour added another day to my drive. I'd like to see a warning and alternate route, if there is a possible seasonal closure. Does anyone know if there is a map and direction service out there that factors in the time of year?
I have had trouble with both mapquest and yahoo maps. After several times of getting lost, I gave up on them both. I personally like Microsoft Streets and Trips (I know, I'm supporting the evil empire) but with the rebates it turns out to be free. Aside from the fact that my street isn't even on their map, and I've lived here for 2 years, its never gotten me lost before.
Mapquest and Yahoo maps have both misled me when I was going within a city. They were off, really off, like driving into a condemned old factory off. For long road trips however, I haven't had a problem with them.
"Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the life-long attempt to acquire it." -Albert Einstein
honestly when u get lost relying on mapquest, it aint pretty.
.. and/or the major highways & exits on the route.
Always buy a map of the area you are going to be travelling to
Use printout of mapquest directions in combo with that.
Then it sold, off and the others have been less than the best.
www.maporama.com I've found to be pretty decent, Mapquest used to be my first point to check but lately I've been using O'rama and its great.
--------- If its possible it will happen, If its impossible it will just take longer
I find that Rand McNally gives by far the best directions. The major drawback for me is that it doesn't work in Canada, but I find that in the States it gives amazing directions. MapQuest and Yahoo both put you on major throughways, but Rand McNally will point out the roads that only locals would know about. Choosing "shortest distance" instead of "fastest" gives really great results.
wises.co.nz is awesome. it calculates trips very well right across the country and you can zoom right out to see the whole route, or you can zoom in to street level..
very nice indeed.
The reason girls and Windows users don't understand UNIX is because all the documentation is in Man files.
I've always liked Mapblast and its Line Drive directions.
Mapblast was recently acquired by Microsoft and renamed "MSN Maps and Directions", but it's still a good service. The Line Drive directions simply show you the turns with cross-streets, and mileages between each waypoint, without anything else cluttering up the map.
On the other hand I have found maps.yahoo.ca to be quite an excellent service. Go yahoo go.
A Multiplayer Strategy Game for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux
According to this case study (ppt), MapQuest was founded in the 60's.. hit the electronic front in 91, and launched on the web in '96. So if we're talking the web based MapQuest, 7 tops.. 40's if they used the paper maps :) But heck, I was a young computer user, so who knows - though I can't recall using maps at that age.
I've always had pretty good luck with MapQuest. Except for this one time when, lulled into a false sense of security, I trusted the driving directions I'd printed without reading the fine print. Ended up no where near where I was supposed to be. Then I noticed the tiny print saying words to the effect that "we couldn't find the address you asked for, so we've given you directions to the center of the town." Great.
// todo: implement sig
I needed direction to a school in newark I was student teaching at, it gave me these unbeleiveable direction through elzabeth and newark when all I had to do is take the parkway to bloomfield and drive down the road into newark.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
How old are you exactly?
I was wondering if the data on the CDs you buy from NavTech is actually available in a handy electronic form for free?
It just seems like linux is missing a really cool opportunity to cash in on the embedded navigation market but doesn't seem to be doing so and I was wondering if this is because we can't get any access to decent electronic roadmap data without significant cost or NDAs.
I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
I've had one bad experience with Yahoo Maps, going from San Jose, CA, up to a bed and breakfast in Napa Valley. The directions led us into the middle of nowhere, on smaller and smaller streets. First highways, then local roads, then gravel, then dirt, and finally farm access roads that were posted as private property, were overgrown with weeds, and were basically just ruts from where the tractors drove. The last 3 "roads" weren't even given names on the map. As it was nearing midnight and rainy, this was not a fun time at all.
We were using the mileage indicators faithfully, so I'm pretty confident that this was the route the map intended us to take.
Recently,
Yahoo changed their mapping program such that many of the buttons no longer work using Mozilla 1.4.
Is it an issue with Mozilla or with Yahoo! I don't know but I know who won out in my case. Mapquest did!!!
Caution: Contents under pressure
Try it out, great algorithms.
This is a little off topic, but I was wondering if anyone had experience with any software/services for placing MULTIPLE destinations on a map. I think none of the free ones do this, but I've heard that some companies offer this feature with their subscription programs.
What I really want this for is garage sale route planning (though I'm sure it has other uses as well). I would like to be able to enter all the address and have little markers appear on the map. It doesn't need to plan the route (I know this is a hard problem) -- just plot the locations. Anyone have experience with the subscription services and know whether this is possible? Anyone know of any other software which can already do this?
I use http://www.mapsonus.com
Can't say its better than the rest though.
you insensitive clod!!
Wait, was this a poll? I don't remember. Maybe you could direct me to the proper section...
The old guy hanging out at AAA. He'll give you the right directions and more detail than you'll ever want to know.
I have a copy of Streets 98 on a CD. When you need some flexibility as to what needs to be displayed, how to control your route (waypoints) etc, it is more useful than web-based technologies.
The downside is that, like a paper atlas, the CD is not kept up to date - and is not 5 years old. Though it has not been a problem.
Ecce Europa - Web Design for Business
my 2003 acura's in-dash dvd navigation gives extremely accurate directions.
things i would like added:
if i take a different route, remember what you said to take, and remember what i actually did take, and if its quicker, remember that and use the new route in the future.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
Now what would REALLY be nice is if they would ask what time of day you are traveling. There is no way in hell anyone would take a highway down here at 8AM unless they want to be late. If you have an idea of the area, just map the location out, and use known roads to find your way around. That seems to work the best for me...
Test to see who gives correct directions from Columbus, OH to Ann Arbor, MI:
North 'til ya smell it, West 'til ya step in it.
And speaking of best information site, can any tell me why the telephone lookup pages at SBC suck so bad at finding telephone numbers. They are the telephone company for gods sake. They should have the best directory. Yet they have the worst UI, and often won't even return a listing. I have to go to bigyellow or somewhere else to get it.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Granted you have to be a member, but I've had the best luck with AAA TripTik. It tells you details on construction which can be very helpful especially in CT.
They are BOTH Microsoft Owned subsidiaries/arms/tentacles/whatever-you-want-to-c all-them...
Good subject.
I am looking for software that will let me map several (or more) locations throughout a city, attach a marker to each, and publish it to the web - as a guide.
Even better would be one that allows a mouse-over or a click on the markers to reveal the address, or take you to another page, etc.
Anyone know of such a creature? Thanks.
This space available.
I used Mapquest earlier this year to try and get driving directions from Tampa to Atlanta. It could not give me any results. I tried both only the cities, and giving a full address. Nothing, it just gave me some error.
It seems to be working right now, of course, but that's a pretty huge hole in the system to have at any point.
Of course, Tampa to Atlanta is very easy.. Just get on I-75 and go North until you hit Atlanta.
I'm sure this type of thing is going to be VERY subjective - but in my last few experiences looking up residential addresses on MapQuest, I was given inaccurate maps. I don't live in the middle of nowhere either. (I'm in St. Louis, Missouri.) The big problem I had was with it incorrectly indicating where on a street an address really was. It puts the little star on the map as the indicator, but when you actually drive there - you realize it's much further down (or not nearly as far down) the road as it indicates.
At least one time, it didn't even properly show the way several side streets inter-connected. (Probably due to all the road construction around here, and somebody changing the road since their last update - but still, frustrating.)
By contrast, I've had much better luck using Yahoo Maps.
I still prefer DeLorme's Street Atlas USA software to any of these online map services though. You can see much more of the map one one screen without losing as much detail (such as street names!). The most useful thing I've found with any of the Internet-based map services is the ability to generate the text-only driving directions. I often just print those out and use them, without worrying about any graphical map.
(As usual)
8 -19&res=l
:-)
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2002-0
Cut and paste, cause I'm too lazy for HTML
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
i use my garman gps works better then any on line one
The fact that they had switched was the main point of TFA!
My preference is an obscure site in Canada, http://pisces.env.gov.bc.ca/ This site is great for exploring BC. As an avid fly fisher it gets my vote.
The maps are PDF so it appeals to my computer senibilities. The site does not include navigational info unless you can read coordinates, so it is useless to dummies. All in all it is the best map site on the net.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
You have always wanted to fail? Go you.
Having recently reviewed about 25 different O-R mapping tools, including top finishers Apache OJB, Oracle TopLink and Hibernate, I feel comfortable saying that this is the best online mapping site. What's that? Geography you say? Oh, oops, sorry, O-R on the brain. Carry on.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Maporama.com. Very good, detailed maps for allot of countries, displays up to 999x999 resolution. Directions routing for Europe only.
Get Australian directions at WhereIs. But the Aussie streetmaps are better on Maporama.
Very cool arial photography on streetmap.co.uk.
Who else would you trust for directions?
http://www.randmcnally.com/
Yahoo Maps steered me wrong once and I haven't gone back since.
They have shaded relief topographic maps, aerial photos and detailed street maps. I've used the topo maps to plan hiking/geo-caching trips and evaluating raw land to buy. (Haven't bought any. Still looking.)
You can find a place by name, street address or coordinates. The scales go from 1:10,000 to 1:1,000,000. You get a choice of display sizes; small, medium and large. It looks like they have the whole library of USGS maps online.
Check it out. It's worth your time.
I've bought every version of Delorme's Street Atlas since version 4. The interface has always worked extremely well for me and the directions are top-notch. Plus, it integrates directly with my Garmin GPS. The only downside is that it doesn't run well under WINE, so I have to boot to Windows to use it. :-(
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
I used MapBlast all the time. Then it was bought by Microsoft and was replaced by MSN which is really crappy - low resolution and few street names.
I wonder if there is any way to force Microsoft to sell the original MapBlast system, rather than simply suppressing it.
Aren't anti-competitive takeovers wonderful?
I found that MapQuest and Yahoo do a pritty good job. The MSN one (Which mapblast seem to have merged into.) Really stinks at least for the Albany, NY area, where they give a lot of really bad directions and get their compass points messed up and don't seem to know how interstate work. When they tell me to take i90 south I was really turned off. Even though that point of i90 goes south all the sign call it i90 East because the road will go more east. Then they told me to take the wrong exits off it and go West when I needed to go east. So MSN Stink. Before MapBlast got bought out Microsoft It was fairly good except it Never gave the Exit numbers on the interstate, and sometimes there were 3 exits coving 10 miles.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I print off directions from both sites. Sometimes the pages get mixed up, but then I just end up back home, or somewhere else.
I sure hope he means his Driving life, otherwise he's is no more than 10 years old. And if he is driving at 10, I understand why he uses MapQuest, he can't see over the dashboard!
Automap services are great if you are going somewhere new, but if you are going to take a route frequently, nothing beats driving it a few times then getting out an old-fashion paper map and seeing if you can shave a few minutes of your trip going down side roads, etc.
Traffic is still a major factor, and although some mapping systems take this into account, you can't beat a local's knowledge.
I'm constantly finding shorter and shorter cuts around traffic to my regular client sites using a combination of observation and checking on a map.
Oh, and road works don't feature on auto maps. I tried out a few, and found a nice quick (so I thought) short cut.. Which it will be, in 2 years when the road works are finished. The road was a one way, the wrong way.
I use to have a funny sig, but slash cut it off, and I forgot what the punchline was.
MapQuest has some security issues, and I wouldn't recommend using it without cookies turned off or blocked.
There's a cross-site scripting attack which allows people to steal cookies for the site, which will include personal information such as the last three searches you did.
See this advisory for more info.
My Web Page
Yahoo Maps anti-aliases fonts and map lines. Mapquest is jaggy hell by comparison, important when you want the maps you print to be readable.
I typically cruise around the SOuth Shore of MA, so I sue this thing called, a map book. It takes me like three seconds to find where a street is and the biggest problem is driving there. Unless I'm going somewhere totally crazy I avoid map programs because for me it removes some of a the magic, and I do enjoy the magic.
... for USA use, anyway, and for one simple reason: they both support, to varying degrees, shortest-distance travel directions (as opposed to the quickest-time default).
I've done some experimentation with both sites, primarily concentrating on their shortest-distance (SD) paradigms. Here are a few observations:
HTH ...
I've found that Yahoo Maps works for best for me, at least for directions around Toronto. MapQuest was too often completely wrong, or unable to find one of the addresses.
When I got to the UK, I use multimap.co.uk myself. It seems to work pretty well with just a postcode.
A whole county at a time is great for finding the backroads. I can zoom in and trace across towns, etc. It fits in my palm and doesn't cost much either. There are also free version with less detail.
like many people here, i use yahoo maps for a number of reasons including (a) it integrates really nicely with all my other yahoo modules - e.g. address book (b) it hasn't let me down yet for maps or directions and (c) i like the way the maps look.
however, two features i'd like to see added - i'm not sure they exist anywhere - are:
- be able to go via other addresses or locations - e.g. take me to blah via broadway/masonic
- some form of "use local knowledge" option - some kind of moderation scheme would be required but you would get to choose segments that other people with local knowledge had added - perhaps each time you get a route, you'd get the option to offer a better solution - if enough people agreed, it'd become active and available to everyone else.
Well, I just happen to be an expert on that. First, take 37 to the loop around Indy. Go north to 65. Continue on 65 until 94, and go west. From 94, take 294 West/North. Then, 290 West/North. Then 90 West/North. This will take you to Madison.
Bring a bunch of quarters, dimes, and nickels to pay for toll. It's just a few bucks.
...in Spanish, means "The Royal Road", or "The King's Road". In California, at least, it was a highway that linked the Spanish Catholic missions up and down the coast. The original highway is no longer in use, of course, but California has marked various roads and highways as "El Camino Real". For more history and maps, see this site.
There are two other major El Camino Reals - El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, which may be the one you've seen in Texas (it originally ran from Mexico City to Santa Fe) and El Camino Real de los Tejas, which ran from Mexico City to what is now Louisiana.
That's really funny. Here in Texas, I have had so many problems with Mapquest -- sending me on to streets that don't exist, saying to go too far, making you turn circles the last mile, etc. On the other hand, Yahoo maps work awesome. They consistently display several names of a single road (Mopac is Hwy 1 is Don King Blvd) and don't have the turns at the end of the trip.
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
> I don't live in the middle of nowhere either. (I'm in St. Louis, Missouri.)
Hilarious.
Yahoo! Maps suck. They remain completely (and perhaps blissfully) unaware of the existance of the Hutchinson River Parkway, a relatively important North-South highway for those in the Bronx/Westchester/Long Island area. For those not in the know, the Hutch (as it's called) leads to the Whitestone Bridge, one of the 3 major crossings from the Bronx to Long Island. This lack causes all manner of directions to indicate the Throggs Neck Bridge or the Triboro Bridge, both of which end up 10-20 miles away (and it's a very slow, highly trafficked and under permanent construction 10-20 miles -- At least 30 minutes extra travel time). Going from the Bronx to Mount Vernon (Westchester), it went so far as to steer me through all manner of back roads & alleys as I passed (to my shock) multiple exits from the Hutch. It is this lack that convinced me to never trust Yahoo! Maps again. Even stranger, this bug existed even when Yahoo! was powered by Mapquest....
Webmaster Wanted - Entropic Reactions
At least for California is to download the DRGs, DEMs, DOQQs, road data, hydrography data, landmarks, and anything else that you might find interesting from here CASIL. Also download a GIS viewer, such as Global Mapper runs great under Wine BTW. Get a nice serial interface GPS receiver. Plug them all into your Sony VAIO R505 running Gentoo and go flyfishing where no man has been before ;)
:)
My family and I did this over labor day and the amount of detail I was able to extract from the maps was amazing. I could call out the curves on a logging trail to my dad as he was driving. I was also able to identify water metering stations, survey markers, etc. It also blew away any in-car navigation system I have ever seen. Being able to turn on elevation mapping is a huge help.
The state of California does many things very badly, but I have to hand it to them and thank them as well for making all of their GIS data publicly available free of charge. Keep in mind though that NASA does not always look kindly on someone downloading 9GB of data from them in one night
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
The nearest highway? Why shore, sonny, no problem.
Just git out here on the street and make a left. No, sorry, that's right. No, no, wait, left is right. Now, once you're headin' out that way, be shore to drive slow, cuzza dem potholes the danged gummint never fixes. I swear, those politicians never do a damned thang whut they don't hafta. Spendin' all that money on trips and whatnot, and never a thought atall about the little guy and his shocks.
Why, I remember, just last month, it was. Or maybe the month before that. No, no, it was last month, I remember because that was about the same time my rheumatism flared real bad-like, and I had ta go ta th'doctor, but a'course, he cain't do nuthin' 'bout it, and dat's after I spent FORTY-FIVE MINUTES waitin' in his little waitin' room, with alla dem sick people and squallin' brats. And then, my insurance company is buggin' me about payin' for it, too, since the doctor said he cain't do nuthin'. Anyway, yeah, it was last month, this purdy little lady was drivin' along this road, happy as you please, but not mindin' the potholes, and *wham*, she hit one uh dem big and deep suckers. Well, a'course, like so many young people these days, she was drivin' some foreign piece of shit, so it tore the hell outta that suspension. She damned near had an accident out there! Well, I gave her a good long talking-to about watching out for potholes and buying American, a'course, but she's a woman, so I'm sure she wasn't even listening...
Hey, buddy, where you goin'? I ain't done explainin' how t' get t' the highway!
I once accidentally put a space after the ZIP code in on Mapquest, and it ended up taking me to a completely different destination. I dont' see why accidentally hitting a space in the ZIP would throw it off course badly.
I have never trusted it since. I usually use yahoo now, but be careful with what it gives also.
This site is Europe only at this point, but in terms of serving up map data, it's one of the best that I've seen. Nice vector data streaming, and a whack-load of fast servers on the back end to keep the performace peppy. It's a real web GIS, not some thing that serves up static images. http://www.map24.com
ZOMG.
Using the same start and ending addresses, I get:
- 1056 miles and 16Hr 14Min using maps.yahoo.com
- 1031 miles and 17Hr, 38Min using mapquest.
For the most part, the routings are in agreement; I would judge the mapquest time estimate as slightly more realistic, especially if you must accomodate the needs of other family members. (I did this trip solo in 17 hours flat, but the only stops were at gas stations for fuel.)On this particular route, Yahoo seems to choose the most direct "as the crow flies" routing, while mapquest makes more intelligent decisions. In this case, it was in choosing to go "out of the way" to bypass Morgantown WV to the east, and then take I-68 back west to pick up I-79 south.. Mapquest did that, maps.yahoo did not. Another example is in northern Florida... Mapquest routes you west to US301 (if you're headed to Tampa) and south on I-75, avoiding the Jacksonville - Daytona - Orlando mess along I-95 and I-4.
To its credit, maps.yahoo displays its "Trip-Tik" in a larger format than Mapquest (easier to read when navigating solo), but neither give en-route confirmations. That is, once you turn onto a route, it would be nice to know that you're going to be on it for the next 4 hours...
20: Stay straight to go onto I-64 E/ I-77 S. Continue to follow I-77 S (Portions toll).
310.64 miles
This single Mapquest instruction, while "correct", takes you from Beckley WV to Wytheville VA, then north on I-81N/I-77S, then south on I-77 through Virginia, North Carolina, and all the way to Colombia SC.
Both services could offer a larger map format, ideally something that would just fill an 8.5 x 11 page.
A waypoint is when you want your route to include a specific intermediate destination. It is useful when you want to coerce it to take a certain route.
Maps on Us was created by the Database Systems Research Department at Bell Labs, the research and development arm of Lucent Technologies. In 1998 Lucent sold Maps on Us to Switchboard.com.
My favorite route "goof" is when instead of taking a right turn from one freeway to another, it directed to drive around three cloverleafs!
How many geeks here really need driving directions, we never leave the house!
I keep going back to figuring out my own route once I know where the destination is. I'll use Yahoo or MapQuest to give me an idea of roughly how to get there, but I always take an atlas or local roadmap and my GPS with me.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
MapQuest has the aereal photos feature. 'nuff said.
It used to be when you type an address into one of these online maps, the latitude and longitude of where the X was placed on the map was either displayed right on the result page, burried somewhere in the html, or in the URL. One by, one, the free map services have been dropping this information (perhaps encrypting it in the URL).
I used to have a little PHP web page I could call up from my cell phone that would let me type in an address, and then send an email to my phone with the latitude and longitude which I could then put into my GPS.
Does anyone know if there is any place left on the web that will convert an address to coordinates?
Too true! Two years in Newport now, and Providence might as well be a foriegn country.
Just today I heard an older gentleman from West Warwick calling in on talk radio, explaining passionately why he never goes to Providence (which is barely a 15 min drive on local roads!)
I once printed out some maps for a trip I was taking to Seattle using yahoo ... the maps seemed easier to read than mapquest maps, so why the hell not.
...
So I get there and start driving to my destination, only to discover that the directions on the map had me driving the wrong direction down one way streets.
I also noticed that the maps did not indicate which street were one way vs bi-directional.
I ended up buying some maps from a gas station
Vindigo for Palm devices provides exactly what you are looking for - it's the one killer app for handhelds.
I from the country. I've driven county roads all my life. I don't mind picking the shortest route if it uses a county road. The generated maps could have easily picked Hwy 400 which runs east-west between Pittsburg and Wichita. It's a US highway for pete's sake and it runs at 65! I don't trust the online maps much. Your mileage may vary, literally.
Available from MapMinder, is a mapping service developed by Telmap. The map itself is beautiful (especially compared to MapQuest and Yahoo! Maps).The client is in Java, and works on all platforms with a Java Virtual Machine, but the website itself is sometimes broken on various browsers - if you decide to test it, I suggest going straight for the map after registering (they have a 30 day free account). The map on this particular website is only for the UK, but the underlying technology is (obviously) not limited to it, and as soon as other websites start using it...
Disclaimer: I'm one of Telmap's founders and of the original developers of the service.
I just moved to a new area and the "Nearby Businesses" from Yahoo! has come in very handy. I don't really pay much attention to the driving directions for inside the city, but letting me search by name or category is quite helpful. As far as I can tell MapQuest has no equivalent.
When I drove from NYC to Myrtle Beach this past summer, Yahoo said 12 hours, and MQ said 10, so I used Mapquest's directions. Well, the "major highway" that I was on for 6 hours (707) added 5 hours to my drive. I was on a side road w/ traffic lights for 300 miles
If you're not a Liberal in your 20's, then you have no heart.If you're still a Liberal in your 30's you have no brain.
I use mapquest most of the time but there are of course problems with actually getting to most efficient route.
Recently I was looking up directions from the central coast to davis in california. Almost every single map site listed directions going right through the bay area instead of taking I5. I finally found that expedia listed a more sane route using I5.
The problem w/ map sites is most of them use the same database so if theres a problem, it's likely wrong on all of them.
Also, I dislike that you can't specify an alternate route using certain freeways.
Amen (and I'll gladly share your flames)! Pretty much the only online site I use is MSN Maps & Directions. Most readable maps and accurate directions, by far.
Downside? It chokes under Mozilla, Firebird and Opera (the legitimate browsers I've tried). It's one of the 3-4 sites I load IE for (among them my bank--that pisses me off!) But it gives great maps, and to M$N's credit, never has popups.
"I've been using MapQuest most of my life"
There's something wrong with that expression, maybe it's because the internet is i dont know... about 8 years old?
Note : Don't give me that crap about being invented in 1969, it's been mainstream since about 1995.
Trolls dont like to be Flamebait, because they burn so well. Protect our Troll heritage!
Take your son or daughter to your college, and show him/her your dorm room when you first ventured into the "real world", back in the Peace and Love, Hell No We Won't Go days.
"Dad, just show me where the ATM machine is..."
I know it's *gasp* Microsoft, but the mappoint engine and content at mappoint.msn.com has always worked very well for me.
I have used MapQuest and MapBlast, but nothing beats Viamichelin if you are planning a road trip in Europe. MapQuest and MapBlast both provide great city maps and I use them often, since I live in Canada. ViaMichelin provides a quality of service and features that I have yet to see on the other two.
:)
Just try creating an route map for London, UK to Nice, France and see how good it is
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
As I resident of LA this summer, I enjoyed countless hours on the freeways enjoying the scenery at 5 mph. There are many times when directions specifically designed to route around the current traffic conditions would have been an invaluable timesaver. I know that Microsoft's Mapblast gives you an estimated driving time, yet this is useless as it gives the same estimate whether its 7 AM rushhour or 3 AM on a Sunday night. Are there any websites out there with this functionality?
I used to think "eh, mapquest, mapblast, what's the difference?" Used to, until last Friday night. I was trying to get from one college to another in Santa Fe, NM, so I headed over to mapblast, thinking "so what if it's Microsoft? How badly can they screw up something like this?" I put in the addressses, printed out the directions, and hopped into the car. Around the third or fourth turn, I realised I was to "Turn left onto Local Street(s)." I kid you not. The directions were practically useless. And if you don't believe me, chart a course from St. John's College in Santa Fe to College of Santa Fe and see for yourself.
Just type something that looks like an address into google. At the top of the search results, it'll give you an option to map to that address using both mapquest and yahoo maps. Then you can open both of those links and just choose whichever one looks better for the particular address you're looking at.
Personally, I like mapquest better because it's relatively easy to get directions to/from a previously-mapped address. Also because it also creates Avantgo pages for you relatively easily (which I sync to my Visor from Linux using jpilot's malsync conduit). And also because you can map out long directions turn-by-turn.
I once used MapQuest to get directions to Mount Si in Washington from Seattle when a friend of mine was visiting.
We drove for two and a half hours and the route ended in the middle of a desert area in eastern Washington without a mountain in sight, although we did see some tumbleweed roll by.
We later found out that Mount Si was only supposed to have been a 30-45 minute drive out of Seattle.
I'm in Australia, you insensitive clod.
for Europe only: www.viamichelin.com I use it all the time, has a good interface and knows all the information I need to know :)
Of course it could be different for other countries, but using it for looking up streets in The Netherlands it is perfect!
sig(h)
I've found that using Mapquest has given me bad directions too many times. Mapquest seems encounter problems sometimes when a street doesn't really follow a straight line. For example, people have used both Yahoo and Mapquest to get to my home (I live in a city in California). As you come off the highway, the road curves to the right, but as long as you stay on it, you can reach my home correctly. Yahoo correctly tells people there is a slight curve to the right. However, Mapquest seems to (and don't ask me why) intepret the road as splitting off and tells the user to take a LEFT on a completely different road. This can happen a lot in the city too (for me in both Chicago and San Fran). Yahoo hasn't branched me off to wrong streets yet, but I wouldn't say Yahoo's directions are 100% either. However, I would highly recommend Yahoo over Mapquest any day.
mappoint.msn.com
f au lt.mspx
or you can use it in your own programs with the XML web service
http://www.microsoft.com/mappoint/webservice/de
i want more arial photos terrafly has realestate info, demographics, it's an info orgy for christsakes! don't care much for the "fly quota" but i recon they gotta protect their interests. terraserver is good too, but the navigation (and all that info) makes terrafly way better.
Road maps are all fine and dandy, but the local Auto Association gives them for free if you're a member, to pretty much anywhere in North America.
What I'd kill for are some nice online topographic maps, preferably 1:50 000 or better, of Canada. Hiking's a real bitch when you have to shell out $10 for a Gemtrek every time you venture out somewhere new.
Anyone know of anything like this?
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
I use Yahoo and MapQuest because I frequently am given incorrect information or my destination can't be plotted at all. It kind of sucks to discover your map is wrong when you're in the car. Always get a second opinion.
I used to only use Yahoo! a few years ago and I *never* failed to get lost with their directions. I now swear by Expedia and haven't run into a problem.
Seeing as how you are starting in Bloomington, IN your problem is simple: you must be an IU student. Therefore maps and map reading are very tough subjects. May I suggest you follow these driving directions to Purdue and all problems will be solved
When searching for an address, I've taken to just searching Google for it. The search is recognized as an address, and the top two links are for Yahoo & MapQuest; each gets opened in a new browser tab for comparison. Sometimes I prefer one, sometimes I prefer the other, but being able to have them side by side so easily gets the job done nicely.
Random recent observations, based on things I happened to be searching for earlier today:
For searching for domestic addresses, neither Yahoo Maps nor MapQuest has completely won me over. Searching both is easy enough that, barring a site redesign on the Mapquest side or a software upgrade on the Yahoo side, I for one will probably keep using both.
Does anyone know of any good alternatives to the "big two"? Or how about for international addresses -- is Yahoo good enough for addresses in e.g. Canada or Europe, or are there better local alternatives? I've seen streetmap.co.uk cited a lot by Londoners, but I don't know what people tend to use elsewhere, or if streetmap.co.uk has any major competition.
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
While MapPoint is an actual MS product and service, they spun off Expedia. I believe that Expedia is no longer Microsoft owned or controlled.
Having said that, Microsoft sells a Mappoint Web Services (it used to be a big subscription thing with some pretty hefty sign-up fees, but I can't seem to find those pages now) that allows you to integrate MapPoint web technologies into your site. Given that Expedia was, and probably still is, Microsoft technology based, it seems likely that they'd utilize it as a paying customer.
NONE of them. I stick to CD based maps and thus that's my main reason for sticking to Windows. Anyway it's not like Mapquest always updates there maps. They update once a year as well. Not to mention the fact that getting a map is WAYYY faster even then getting them off of a highspeed connection. Plus they work with GPS's also.
Now when cheap and fast GPRS comes to play, Mapquest will have to reinvent itself and provide the maps almost realtime...won't happen for a while yet but it could happen.
Gorkman
I usually use mapquest, out of habit, but it is all wrong with my town. The highway hasn't gone through town for at least 7 years, yet Mapquest still shows it in town. The streets otherwise are marked correctly, but it still puts my house about 5 blocks from where it really is.
Then again, I live in a small town in Iowa, so who cares anyway...
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
I can't comment as to whether MapPoint is purchased technology (though Microsoft has been at Streets and Trips, which is a variant, for years), however Microsoft bought Vicinity early this year: Obviously Vicinity, the makers of MapBlast, didn't give them MapPoint unless it was in some weird time warp manner where they imbued them with it in the past.
For a great combination, stick a PCCard GPS or even a Garmin with a serial cable on your notebook, and MapPoint can track your position in realtime, offering driving instructions.
Big mistake.
No, not a mistake using Mapquest, but a mistake going without a GPS. None of the streets were labeled so we never knew where the hell we were. Turns out the maps and directions were perfect, but that didn't help if we didn't know where we were. So I vote for Mapquest plus a GPS receiver.
I just checked yahoo, it suggests the route I would take, it avoids chicago and most the illinois tollway.
I also agree that the service provided by Yahoo! Maps, Mapquest, and the like are not always perfect. However, I must say that I'm quite impressed by the overall quality of the results, especially if one takes into account the complexity of the problem.
Not only the result is relatively good, but it is also very quick to compute.
Does someone know what type of algorithm is used for finding the shortest route? Pardon my ignorance but I only know of Dijkstra-like algorithms for finding the shortest route in a weighted digraph, but I'm sure its impossible to use it for these purposes.
Does anybody know of a good PDA application with reliable maps? I don't care much for driving directions, I just want to have a map that I can search by street name and number, put some custom markers and find out where I am. Downloadable driving directions would be a plus.
I am currently using Rand McNally's StreetFinder with a free sample map, but the interface is not ideal. I would like to spend my money on something better, if such thing exists.
It also bothers me that it cannot find my address (which is at a reasonable big street), although it will show the street name in the map.
Slashdot's audience is knowledgable. We've been doing some work with campus visitor maps here at the University of California, San Diego. Curious what you think? Public maps are located at:
http://maps.ucsd.edu/
Some features include dynamic image processing, historical aerials, spatial location indices and graphical responses to location lookups. Viewport scales from a large monitor down to PDA. The client-side is any generic web browser. Server is a PIII-733. Behind the scenes we're doing DBMS driven polygon fills and real-time layering (eg. GIS/CAD) in a browser.
If you get the inclination, feel free to browse around. Any feedback, suggestions or ideas for improvement are welcome.
Thanks!
Roger Anderson
Campus Planning
UC San Diego
Naturally, at each point on the itenerary, you can get information about restaurants and hotels in the vicinity. Of course, the only way to plan a trip properly is from restaurant to restaurant, so I find this very useful!
Because after 4 versions it *still* says you can drive from the continental US to Cuba. 269.2 Miles, just over 7 hours, from Miama to Havana. LOL
I have experiance with most sites. http://www.mapsonus.com seems to be most accurate out of the bunch.
Just because it is peppered with lights...just like 87, 84, 92, 237, 130, and half of the other highways going through the Bay.
Kivera.com is better than Mapquest. Same base data, but you have to understand how the various data cost models work and therefore why one company will (while trying for lower cost data) have better or worse data. Kivera's data selection algorithm gives customers a better mix of excellent results for lower cost. However, last I spoke with them, their mode of operation required their servers in your Data Center with periodic stats collection for billing. MapQuest, on the other hand, does everything via HTTP ASP model.
This may be my provincial bias, but I tend to use DeLorme's online service at http://www.earthamaps.com. Of course, I also carry a copy of their Maine Atlas in the car whenever I go anyplace > 10 miles from I-95....
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
expedia.com has nice looking maps and i find their directions to be better than mapquest..
Hmmm. Just tried it and it missed my address by two blocks, as well as goofing up the name of a nearby high school. I do love the large map size, though.
BTW, It seemed to work fine with Mozilla 1.5
They all have their problems with certain routes. Plot your route on two different sites. If the results aren't strikingly similar, go for a third opinion.
Having said how much I luuurve Linedrive, I shall contradict myself...
It would be useful to be able to go "VIA" a location to miss out traffic-heavy areas, congestion charge zones etc. e.g. Docklands to Clapham (both in London) - it's often better to go South of the River to do this route, but LineDrive will plot a path through the centre of London.
Jai Alai JUST played their last game. I'm sorry I never got to go see one.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
MapPoint is amazing. I know that it's MS and praising MS is like yelling, "Hail Satan!".
It has the ability to download construction info, which has saved me headaches the few times I've had to drive long distances. It lets you know how to avoid the bad spots.
You can also set preferences... want to drive highways, artery roads, service routes? None of the above? Do you want the fastest way to get there, or the most direct route? (Yes, there's a difference and believe it or not will save you $20 on gas if you need to drive 600+ miles).
You can even type in your MPG and current (average) price of gas to get a fairly accurate reading on how often you'll need to stop and fill up.
The aforementioned features might be a tad bit overkill for something local, but it gets the job done nonetheless.
I drove from Virginia to Michigan and the very first time I didn't remotely get lost once. When it tells you "2.2 miles" it's so accurate that you can reset your trip odometer and once it hits that point, you're right at the spot you should be to turn, get on the ramp, merge, etc...
But enough MS praise, you're making me feel dirty...
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
erm, required...
*or, understand how strange it is...
My life in the land of the rising sun.
I spent 9 months on the Navajo Reservation in Ganado, Home of the famous Hubbell Trading post, which is the local food and gift shop, and stored maybe a larger 7-11's worth of stuff. If this was insufficient you headed 30 miles to the next town which had a strip mall and a larger 7-11 type store. If that wasn't enough, you could head out of state 60 miles away to Gallup, New Mexico a thriving metropolis of, back then, about 15000 people. There you could your basic necessities. This was not a good 9 months till I found myself in civilization.
This region could lead to directions such, drive 5 miles till you reach the dirt road and this would be unambiguous. You wouldn't see any other roads out there, and maybe a hogan (sp? basically a small mud hut) or two. Directions like turn left at the Navajo in the gutter while in Gallup on the other hand might be ambiguous.
As a software enginer, I have no idea why anyone would trust software-generated maps. Us programmers, we can't even make coffee or fill out our timesheets. You expect us to generate good directions? We're the same guys that try to get visitors to do laps around the cube farm looking for the bathroom.
I tend to use a variety of these to calculate my routes, although only for long hauls through strange cities do I find them necessary. Mapquest seems best to me for mapping a point, Yahoo for quickly mapping a route, and Mapblast for understanding a route through strange urban territory.
That said, I can't find a single decent outdoors mapping program, online or offline. I have tried DeLorme Topo, but it sucks. Sure, the topographic mapping is nice, but you can't map out county, township, and section lines. Anyone know of one? An added bonus if it shows federal and state land ownership. I hate having to go to the BLM and try to work with them to get an unusably large and fragile paper map.
Mapquest and Yahoo have Canada maps, but they are missing a fair bit of locations it seems. Any Canada-centric ones out there?
Vindigo, on the other hand, is fantastic. It's a city guide for Palm OS that includes mapping and door-to-door directions. As in "Show me how to get to The Fillmore from where I'm at now, find me parking, then show me all the Italian restaraunts within a 1 mile radius." I've used it in SF, San Jose, LA, DC, Baltimore, San Diego, and it's always been a winner. When my car broke down in Central Los Angeles, it was quite literally a life-saver. Plus, you can walk down a city street holding your PDA like a tricorder as you home in on your destination.
Interociter
-=What do I want? I'm an American. I want more.
It was UGLY. An out-of-state developer fronted enough cash to buy out Fort Thunder, the flea market, and several other old mills-turned-warehouses at Eagle Square and turned them into a Stop And Shop, the company was FELDCO. There was a massive sticker campaign and stop signs everywhere were reading "STOP feldco" (like the "STOP eating meat" signs). There were protests and petitions too, but the 'reniassance' had a lot of momentum, and there was just too much money behind FELDCO.
The Fort Thunder crowd (Providence's not-so-mainstream artists/artisans) set up camp nearby in Olneyville at a place I beleve they're calling 'the sand palace', but the good days are apparently over. The harsh economy doesn't provide much money for struggling artists these days, it seems.
That whole neighborhood is gentrifying quickly with the Providence Place Mall so close (the neighborhood is 'behind' the mall, which separates downtown from the 'underdeveloped' areas). The late-nite Silver Top diner was closed down and there's a giant luxury apartment building going up there. Rents are getting out-of-hand too, and that was an area already under economic duress, I feel bad for my friends in the area who now have to pay a lot more and get nasty looks from the 'old school' neighborhood folks.
My AIM info is in my slashdot profile, feel free to IM me if you're coming to town, or want to. That goes for anyone who knew what Fort Thunder was, or wants to.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Consumer Reports did a comparison of online maps/directions, and Mapquest won by some margin that was large enough to convince me that it's the best on average. Their walk-through of the results confirmed this for me. I remember one big problem was that a lot of sites gave directions that ended some place other than the intended destination much more often than Mapquest.
This was in an issue maybe four months ago? Six months? I read Consumer Reports when visiting my parent's house, so I can't look it up to tell you more specific results, or even which issue to look in if you're interested - can anyone help us out?
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
I've tried it recently, and didn't have any problem using a gecko based browser with it.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
This method of giving directions works quite well when your state is only 8 city blocks wide.
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
and now you view mapquest in 640x480 with extra large fonts on a 21 inch monitor..
How does a country where people where hats on their feet, and hamburgers eat people help you find your way around Canada and the U.S.?
For planning real trips, I use the "Street Atlas" software (by DeLorme, I think). It does a great job of planning routes, even on long interstate trips with multiple stops.
I can't remember one trip I have been on since reaching adulthood where I didn't plan my route using MapQuest if I did not know my way. Not once has it failed me on a single vaction or business trip. I guess this route planning service is something folks used to get with AAA membership? I think I remember my parents having a bunch of state maps and stuff from AAA when we would travel in the 80's and early 90's. I wonder what kind of effect this has had on their business over the past 10 years or so. My favorite feature of MapQuest is using the aerial photography/satellite view. It gives you a neat perspective of your home town and doesn't cost a dime. Rusty
No Sig For You
Heh, same here. There is a drive and a road by the same name, I happen to live on the drive. MSN changes the drive I typed on the address box to road.
Works in Safari.
must... stay... awake...
I've noticed another difference. I drive all over RI and MA to service Citizens Bank, and I've observed that Rhode Islanders and Mass residents have VERY different driving habits.
A Massachusetts driver will try cramming their car alongside another in traffic under 40MPH, trying to turn one lane onto two, which HORRIBLY borks any type of merging and brings traffic to a halt (bandwidth is great, latency SUCKS). They also have to deal with massive traffic daily, and tend to have excellent driving skills, but terrible manners. Do NOT, under ANY circumstances stall out at a green light in a small Mass town, you will be crucified.
Rhode Island drivers have TERRIBLE driving skills, due mostly to the fact that you can't ash a cigarette in the state without it landing on someone you know (and therefore offend), and nobody putting over 10,000 miles/year on a car. They tend to hover in BETWEEN lanes, effectively turning wide two-lane overpasses and city streets into single-lane traffic clusterfscks. Also, the cars in RI tend to be bigger, older, and heavier, so I'd avoid an accident here.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
People do that everywhere you have people who stay in one place for a while.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
At least Yahoo maps does NOT show a non-existent street in my hometown like Microsoft's MSN does!
5 5) /map.aspx?L=USA&C=36.56183%2c-82.55701&A=7.16667&P =|36.56183%2c-82.55701|1|Birdshit+Ave%2c+Kingsport %2c+TN+37660|L1|
Birdshit Avenue in Kingsport Tennessee.. Yeah, right!
http://mappoint.msn.com/(tznt4n55n0zotg45xzopz5
PS. I had to drive there just to see.. It doesn't exist, a vacant field and some apartment buildings where they show the street to be.
I've used Mapquest a lot and tried Yahoo maps on occasion. Both are far more accurate in cities than in the suburbs and often seem to be guessing out in the country. Probably 90% of my searches are in Manhattan, checking the cross streets when all I have is a street address (there are arcane formulas for this but nobody knows them). Mapquest is accurate to the friggin' meter in New York City. (And where else matters?) You can tell how many steps from the corner a store is.
But when planning a trip in southern California I found it less accurate, though rarely annoyingly so. And up in the sticks in northern California near Oregon it was simply not up to date. Highway exits and roads newer than a year or even two usually weren't represented at all.
Directions might work eventually but they are often terribly inefficient. Try asking for directions to somewhere you know very well and see what you get. I've seen it give routes that are almost circular and definitely not quickest.
If you are in the US, go with AAA. You can now get one of their TripTik maps right online and print it out. I picked up their service at the beginning of summer and have really liked the web interface for finding directions. It will even show hotels and resteraunts close to your destination and allow you to add them to your route easily.
Some really bad experiences in Appalachian Kentucky taught me that any of the on-line maps have serious deficiencies. Since that time I'll use them for general driving directions and estimated travel times, but I always follow up with a visit to the local CAA (AAA in the U.S.) for a good old paper road map.
Three Squirrels
. . . the Indo.com Distance Calculator (http://indo.com/distance/index.html) is a VERY useful tool. From the site:
This service uses data from the US Census and a supplementary list of cities around the world to find the latitude and longitude of two places, and then calculates the distance between them (as the crow flies). It also provides a map showing the two places, using the Xerox PARC Map Server.
P.S. Let this post recover me from the bad karma post that I made before, please! Mod me up if you think this is even a remotely cool tool!
If you have an MSDN universal subscription, it includes MapPoint 2004, which is a standalone application for mapping and route planning. I think it beats the pants off the web services in terms of accuracy and gives you much greater control over your route, e.g., you can select certain roads, highways, etc. that you want to travel on. Definitely worth a look, especially if you can get it for free via MSDN...
that the US version includes Canada and there is also a European version available for dl at MSDN too.
Maps On Us is my favorite site, because of the addressbook and arbitrary number of intermediate stops features.
It's US-specific, though.
I haven't used any online maps in awhile for exact directions. When I tried to goto Reno about 3-4 years ago and printed out directions(I think yahoo maps) We ended up spending about 3 extra hours. One of the highways apparently was the old highway and they had a newer and better one that took forever to find.
MapQuest was bought by Microsoft. I don't use it anymore.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
crazy 20-year olds throwing around terms like 'most of my life'.
would ask something like this
I drove 6000 miles from coast to coast in my Turbo MR2 using Maps and Trips 2004 with a GPS. I couldn't get lost if I had tried. The maps were accurate, and I could generate a new map if I decided to take a detour or side trip. Only twice did trips and maps show my position as being off the road and I'll tell ya, it was amusing watching the computer claim that I was driving in a river. =)
In my experiments with that product line, it is actually worst in class. They must have done it deliberately, though I can't see why.
You can get just about any USGS quadrangle map at Topozone. If you're willing to take screen captures and piece it together, you can put together a great map for hiking with all the elevation details you could ever need. And yes, all that stuff about county lines and public/private land should be there for all the lower 48. Sorry canada.
Mod up, this works in USA too
I recently went on a trip and used mapquest to get the general idea of the area I was in .. and was thinking mabey some color coding would be nice for Gang related areas.. pimp hangouts..and such. This would be a great service for prospecting hor..umm individuals and also help keep people in safer places.
Second, data providers should be publishing their data using OpenGIS standards such as Web Map Services and Web Feature Services, so I can use any OGC compliant interface (or implement my own).
My favourite online mapping software is Mapserver because it's open source, and compares really well with any of the commercial offerings.
Of course, good software counts for squat unless you have good data behind it. Good geocoded address/driving data takes time and money to compile.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Check out MS Streets and Trips. If you use online map services frequently, Streets and Trips is worth every penny. It's incredibly more powerful and flexible, not to mention faster since it's all on your local machine.
I've used yahoo maps and M$ Streets for most of my trips, but i find that mistakes almost always occur in their directions. That's okay, because i can READ SIGNS. Also, getting out of my phat ride once in a while to actually ask someone for directions(I know, this is against the male code of conduct) is usually a productive way to get from point A to B.
Slartibartfast:"Is that your robot?"
Marvin:"No, I'm mine."
I found www.maptech.com the other day. Looks pretty good, can be used as a web service too it appears.
John Kerry is a Joke!
by far in term so accuracy of directions and geociding is microsoft. I've done tests with mapquest, ms mappoint.net and mapinfo. also, as a service, mappoint.net is the slowest one and regularly times out. Just ask companies using it. This isn't a troll, it's from developing applications using their enterprise level service.
it appears that out of all of the US sites, only mapquest has "avoid highways" feature, which comes quite handy sometimes.
All I'm saying is: States shouldn't have a "downtown." Cities have downtowns. States don't. Also, states don't have a singular university everyone goes to on the weekends; they have many universities, located conveniently is cities. (And some cities may have more than one University). Therefore, Rhode Island is a city. And not a very big city. QED.
It's nothing but crumpled porno and Ayn Rand.
Well, the article you refernced is over a year old and things change pretty fast in that space. Personally, the data provided by MapPoint.net's online mapping is far supperior to both mapquest and Yahoo's solutions. Of the 2 former though Mapquest is definitely superior... for the best though, see MapPoint
Glenn Letham www.GISuser.com www.SymbianDevZone.com
MSN is the ONLY site that is able to give driving directions from Juneau, AK to San Francisco, CA - including the directions through Canada.
Mapquest failed.
Yahoo failed.
Multimap failed.
I was about to give up because I didn't even know MSN had mappoint, but there it was.
I had to travel to Oak Ridge, TN for work and I was going to use Yahoo for driving directions. It kept finding Oakridge, TN which is in the western part of the state and Oak Ridge is in the eastern. I even used the zip code for Oak Ridge and it still kept making Oakridge be the one that was used. I emailed them about it but got an automated response. I used Mapquest and they were able to distinguish between the 2 towns just fine.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
is used by the military. The level of accuracy and the quality of the data is much better than all the commercial offerings. All the commercial offerings do not use the full precision. In fact all of them do some rounding up, because the underlying data is not accurate enough. obviously the military has to have the most accurate data because lives depend on it.
Try out http://terraserver-usa.com You can really see where you are going now, albeit from an unsual perspective.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Last year I had to drive a Ryder truck of furniture from Vermont to Brooklyn. Not a big truck, more like a cube van, but I'm sure it counted as a truck as far as the Revenue Enhancers were concerned. I dutifully went to the mapping site (can't recall whether it was Yahoo or Mapquest), printed out the directions, map of destination in several different resolutions, etc. Unfortunately, one of the roads we were plotted on was for trucks only, and we didn't know this until the on-ramp. I took the road anyway, and we went for about 45 minutes before my wife ordered me to get off at the next exit so we don't get some huge fine. Needless to say, we got lost. We got more lost later, small town Vermont boy driving a Ryder van through Manhattan during rush hour, wife screaming from the passenger seat. Large fun.
Anyway, is there a way to find a TRUCK route point-to-point? And to the mapping website people, maybe a quick disclaimer about the routes being for passenger cars...
Capnfutile
Streets and Trips is useful for short door-to-door trips. When I used it recently on a road trip across the country, several design shortcomings became obvious.
The most vexing: you can't measure the distance along your planned route. You want to know how far it is to a given city/gas station/motel? One would think that you'd be able to click on the location where you are now, then on the other location, and it would tell you the distance. Of course, that would be too obvious. What you really need to do is draw a free-hand line with the mouse, over the already highlighted route. This is inconvenient (esp. on a laptop touchpad in a moving car), clunky, and plain dumb.
Want the program to help you with your daily schedule? Sure, just set the time when you start driving, end driving (+/- several hours), and expected average speed. This is going to remain the same for the duration of the trip, and it's impossible to adjust on the fly (i.e. just type in the time when you actually started driving and having it adjust the times.) I could go on, but you get my point. It's useful, functional, but most road-trip specific functions are ill-thought through and largely useless.
On a Yahoo Search for 'map', their own map service shows up third. MapBlast and MapQuest comes first.
Good there are still honest people...
Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors!
Der best mepping happenen mitt der anus
I don't know about them using the same data... My wife always uses mapquest, and she's always having a hard time finding what she's looking for on it. I, however, insist on using Yahoo Maps, and it has streets that Mapquest doesn't have. They don't necessarily get the same data. I think Yahoo gets the latest data, while mapquest just uses older data.
If you live in or around San Jose California you quickly become familiar with El Camino Real. Indeed not the place to get you from point A to point B very quickly. I do have a fun reccommendation for anyone in Silicon Valley though. Pick a sunny weekend and drive El Camino Real allll the way to San Francisco! Is quite a trip that gets you through an amazing amount of interesting, quircky, rich, poor, really poor and other weird neighbourhoods. Fun, really!
Ok, You're all wrong
... im not talking the best implementation which is how all the rest of you seem to be answering. I'm talking the best software for doing the job.
.... think my price is still expensive? then don't bother looking at ESRI's ArcIMS cuz you'll find them starting 10X higher for crappy software that craps out on a 10mb raster while Mapserver chews through airphoto mosaics 800mb and bigger like no ones business.
/.'ers not to swamp my puny home computer I'd show you the best damn Internet mapserving site you've ever seen, set up to show off any and all data imaginable about a gold mine property with 75 map layers available so far (for a small company that you would never think could afford a map serving website). But I don't trust you.
The best internet mapping software is MAPSERVER
Its free, has no licensing fees, open source, and has a large community of users dedicated to improving and advancing the software.
mapserver homepage:
http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/
Don't like how it looks or works? - make your own interface. There are versions for any operating system under the sun and source code readily available.
Think it can't handle the load? - During the last Canadian federal election, a specialized MapServer website on an Apache cluster server, showing live election results easily handled creating 150,000 maps in one evening.
The Canadian government as well as the province of BC are slowing shutting down their MapGuide based websites and setting up MapServer websites why? - because one guy like me can setup a custom mapserver website for less than the cost the annual license fee for Autodesk MapGuide! ($13,000 a year for MapGuide in canada with NO phone support!)
MapServer can display Shapefiles, Coverages, GeoTiffs, MapInfo layers, Oracle, ArcSDE, PostGIS or other spatial database features taking in the features and reprojecting them into your local map projection on the fly.
MapServer can also act as a layer server making your data available as layers on someone elses map. Some guy even made a way for his mapserver to read directly out of an ArcIMS server.
Output images are in many formats GIF, JPG, Flash or even as PDF's.
Have a small website that could use a map server? MapServer makes it possible for nothing but your own time invested.
Now if i could trust you
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
These on-line maps lack basic features before I can even consider taking them seriously.
1. Weighted streets. If one street is somewhat nearby, is 4 lanes with a 45 mph limit compared to a 2 lane, but nearer busy urban street, guess which one gets picked. Its amusing using these map services when near Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. They will recommend any route except the quickest and most direct.
A selection of AI aided paths would help tremendously.
2. Language: you don't turn onto ramps, etc. Many of these print outs look like you're going to be making a thousand turns because of ambigious language.
3. User feedback: Its understandable that the maps will have all sorts of problems with non-existant streets, construction, etc so why not let users comment on generated paths? "10 people reported this street in this area to be problematic." etc.
4. Last but not least, I need a girlfriend version of mapquest. Just a page with stuff like "Okay turn right at that creepy gas station and keep an eye out for the Burger King. You'll make a left there, no I mean the other Burger King."
On a buisness trip to Philadelphia this year, Mapquest got me SOOOOO lost. I can hardly blame mapquest though, I blame Philadelphia.
A few weeks ago, I took a short trip with my sister who had used the Yahoo map service. One thing I noticed: Yahoo did not provide the exit number, and Mapquest did. The exit number is really helpful when you leave the interstate and the map directions tell you to "Turn left on UNNAMED ROAD".
I don't know what you're using, but I have 2001 and 2003, and they both show you the distance of your route at the bottom of the 'find route' window. Its right next to the duration of the trip.
- Disneyland
- Cape Canaveral and
- even places that don't officially exist
If nothing else, it's a great tool to boost the paranoia level of your friends and family.H0ek
Think you're smart? Prove you've got brains!
if you happen to be in germany/western europe
Their directions may in some cases be somewhat less efficient than the best possible route, but I've never found a case where they simply didn't work. And since they're the only mapping site I've found that has the features I've gotten used to (ie the "avoid toll roads" checkbox), they're the one I'm sticking with.
I typically use Yahoo! maps, but sometimes (like rush hour) I want a route that will avoid major freeways. I may be oblivious to other alternatives, but I've only found this feature at switchboard.com (which actually takes you to mapsonus.com, a service of switchboard, but anyway...)
You can also tell it to Favor Major Freeways if you need that for some reason.
Like Digital Freedoms? Then donate to EFF before they're gone.
I said it in an earlier posting, I'll say it again here.
Mapquest is absolutely worthless in LA, unless you want to spend the rest of your natural life on freeways. Mapquest will try and put you on the 101 no matter what, even if you're going from Santa Monica to West Hollywood (..."Take the 10 to 101; exit at Hollywood boulevard; go west three miles."). It's the equivalent of going from Bangkok to Tokyo via Reykjavik.
While Yahoo isn't always great and sometimes takes some strange routes, it's a lot better for a city like LA, and looking back at some of my old St. Louis routes, it seems fairly sane. Granted, Yahoo may route you down some random streets, but a reality check against a regular map always helps.
Really, online mapping is nice to get a quick & dirty, but nothing beats a comprehensive street-level map like aThomas gude.
I am not Herbert.
I really like Map 24. They don't show images embedded in a HTML page, but they have a Java applet (optionally full screen, rubberband zoom into arbitrary reagions, measure distances, ...) with really cool navigation features. Finding directions is not as good, however. Try it out.
Unfortunately they only have map data for western Europe. That's not a limitation, for me, but it probably is for americans :-)
if I type in an address in Los Angeles, Mapquest actually takes me to a page asking me whether I want California, Texas, or Puerto Rico. Is there a Wilshire Blvd in Puerto Rico?
the RAC blows mapquest, yahoo, and all the others clear out of the water in its superiority.
www.rac.co.uk is the best for Europe IMHO, it uses a java applet to let you zoom and pan in real time. The more you zoom in, the more detail it shows you. You can also print out a list of directions with a little map of each junction, which sometimes helps with the more complicated roundabouts.
Give it a try with, for example, Manchester to Oxford, or Battersea to Chelsea.
Yahoo typically keeps us on freeways. This makes the route quite long (im in los angeles).
Mapquest is the best, dosent use a freeway where not needed.
Sometimes i got a wrong result in expedia ! so thats totally out.
I use Expedia for maps over larger areas or driving directions in Europe.
I do not need US only maps your insensitive clod..
As for directions, living in Southern California provides lots of chuckles w/r/t suggested (or was that "congested"?) travel routes between two points. I especially love the recommendation to take the 5 north from Orange County through LA downtown. Wha? No, thanks. I was hoping to get there in just one day. Then again, the alternate routes are not a whole lot better.
Good thing I can load up my iPod with good music from Windows iTunes while printing my directions in glorious full color ... maybe I will take the 5 afterall so I can listen to the entire "Essential Willie Nelson" album. "Blue skies...."
(I know you think I should have written, "On the road again...", but that would have been chessy).
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Some routes are unwalkable. Freeways, for instance. Others are technically possible but a really bad idea.
What is needed is the ability to select roads *not* to use. This would make bicycle routing much more effective. It would also be useful for driving directions. You may know that a particular road is undesireable do to construction, predictable congestion, etc. It would be really handy to able to say "I know 101 is jammed, what's the next best way"
Ignoring one way streets is good but correcting for speed is just unnecessary. Just read the distance.
"most of my life" - How old are you?
www.bbbike.de does this (for Berlin Germany). and much more. current wind-conditions, traffic-lights optimisation, preferences for mainroads/small roads etc..
plus there is also a standalone perl-Tk app (with more functionality than the CGI-version). plus it is freeware. Just make your own data-file for Bellevue WA! (hm - i guess that's the point why no map service does it. You need a mad guy like bbbike's author to gather all the neccesary data over years and miles and miles of cycling...)
MapQuest and Yahoo are more or less the same thing. I switch between the two. I probably use mapquest most though.
Good lord man -- This is Slashdot! Be careful what you say; you could end up sleeping with the fishies for a comment like that.
Just gimme a good'ole command-line mapping engine.
No offense, but I think you are American ;-)
Indeed, try searching for non-US locations on www.mapquest.com. For instance, Paris, France.
It will give you the choice between Paris Texas, Paris Illinois, Paris Kentucky, ... but not the French capital!
I've already contacted them several times about the issue, but so far they haven't moved... You'd almost think this was intentional!
There is a workaround, however: if you go to one of their European sites (www.mapquest.de , www.mapquest.fr, and yes, even www.mapquest.co.uk) it works all right.
Say no to software patents.
MapQuest has the same feature, but not quite as good as MapBlast.
For Europe, I'm quite a big fan of Map24.
They have a Java applet interface that is nowhere near as clunky as it ought to be. It lets you scroll and zoom interactively, loading detail on the fly.
The same technology is licensed by the RAC, whos version covers more of Eastern Europe. For giggles, I asked it for a route from Birmingham (UK) to Minsk (Byelorussia) avoiding motorways, and it worked a treat, even finding appropriate ferry routes.
I asked it once for a route. The trip was actually about 40 minutes. Had I followed MapQuest's instructions, it would have taken about 8 hours 40 minutes.
I am a lowly Tourist who does not have the benefit of knowing the intricacies of JFK Airport. After a fantastic holiday touring around the NE USA seeing friends and places etc, I made the mistake of using MapQuest to get back to Dollar Rent A Car JFK Jamaica (zip - I forget). The Dollar office is listed on the MapQuest website but if you follow the directions you will end up on the wrong side of the airport. - never again will I trust that piece of xx to navigate in more detail than major trunk roads. It all ended happily, Dollar got us to the checkin on time.
ook ook
Sometimes the photos aren't as useful - roofs don't tend to be very informative in dense areas - but sometimes they are, and sometimes they're just fun. The resolution's good enough to see cars on the street, though not usually to recognize them.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I don't know about the quality of the routes, but in terms of representation, LineDrive is one of the most useful ones out there.
It basically attempts to draw what you would draw on a paper for a friend: very long distances are shortened, useful landscape marks appear, only the useful street names are listed,...
I posted about LineDrive and pointed to a research paper that explains how it works, a little while back. The entry is available here.
One of the most important features for me is being able to pick a big display size. Sure, it's nice that many of the map systems out there have the option to display on a 640x480 screen, but I want to be able to use the pixels I've got. Mapquest is pretty good about offering big or small maps, and Microsoft Expedia is really excellent, at least for displaying non-street maps of random parts of the world, which is the main time I use it.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Gosh I almost feel like a traitor saying this, but, I've recently come to really, really appreciate the maps generated by expedia.com. Why? I'm planning a road trip through much of Mexico, and unlike everyone else, expedia.com actually HAS driving directions in Mexico.
Other than that, I use mapquest.com almost reflexively.
--Jim (me)
Mapquest.ca doesn't exist, or at least it's broken for the moment. But if you go to MapQuest, hit the Maps button, click where it says "United States" and change it to Canada, then type Montreal in for the city, you get the one you want. Of course it's not going to give you Montreal if you type it in the box on the front page, that's for US addresses!
Mod down posts with a "Free Mac Mini/iPod" sig, they're spam!
Definitely Map24. They use a nice Java applet for navigating the maps. The best thing is that it can start it in a separate window and be maximized, so that it takes the whole screen. It is also fast and quite easy to zoom and pan with the mouse.
map.co.il has the best interface i've seen for a map site.
i had a problem with MSN one time, but i'm pretty sure it was my fault. i was trying to get to Seminole FL (which is down by St. Pete and Tampa) to visit a friend of mine who just moved down there. Well, it turns out that down there, there are about a million different roads with the same freaking name all within a 2 mile radius of each other. So what ended up happeneing..I entered the zipcode, but not the city name and MSN i guess, new i needed to get t a Park Blvd. that would connect me to Seminole and then to whatever, or something like that. But instead it took me to a different Park Blvd taht was about 3 miles away. And at no point did it connect to the street that I needed to get off at. So I guess what happened is that it knew i needed to get to this street and that that street connected to Park Blvd, but since i didnt enter a City or something...it gave me directions to the wrong Park Blvd. then assumed that I was on the other Park Blvd. and proceded to give me directions to streets taht didnt exist on the Park Blvd that i was on but existed on the Park Blvd that i should have been on. (does that make sense?) Anyways, I ended up stopping at an Eckards (spelling?) and showed a few locals my map, which confused the heck out of them and they were like "ok something isnt right here." I told them i needed to get to Long Bayou Way and after a few dirty looks and some unnessecerry comments between them "oh, honey thats where those damned rich people live, remember?" she said to her husband then looked at me, "son, are you sure thats where your trying to go? thats an awfully nice neighborhood..." i said i was sure and they got there just fine. my friend, was on the cell phone with me and was trying to track me down on map quest, but that didnt help much, cause i couldnt find any adresses marked on any buildings to give him. i havent tried MSN since, but will say the problem didnt reoccour when we i specified the city name.
Justin Drawbert
www.maporama.com
configurable map sizes, gives WGS84 coordinates of points on map and routes internationally.
Oh, and thanks to mapsonus.com and arriving at butt-crack of dawn, I didn't get laid that night. :)
I said screw mapsonus.com and my girlfriend did just that the next day (Christmas).
Mapquest is great, but you really have to pay attention. It gave me directions to a friend's house, which included a turn on Vista Ln. I missed it, that time and on several subsequent trips, and eventually I figured out that Vista Ln was an alley between a Blockbuster and a Chinese restaurant, barely wide enough for my car and with a street sign only at one end (the one opposite the direction I came from).
Joe Ganley
In my opinion it is more accurate than MapQuest or Yahoo Maps combined. Also easier to use.
The day Microsoft creates a product that doesn't suck, it will be known as the Microsoft Vaccuum Cleaner!
I've started looking around for a GPS unit to use with my laptop (standalone funcitonality would be nice also). Seems a doungle w/ simple GPS (no UI) should be
Also, why doesn't the GPS included in all cell phones have a user interface?
their updating is unreliable. last week, i had to go to an address in columbus ohio that wasn't in mapquest, but was in yahoo maps. the "unknown" street in question had been in place more than a year. this happens to me pretty regularly with mapquest.
the last time it happened, i tried to find a way to report it, but my recollection is, they don't make it easy to point out holes in their data.
i haven't done a comparison, except in the sense that i go somewhere else about once a month -- that implies a failure rate of about 25%.
like any other service, it makes sense to examine the results critically. in many areas, their freeway exit numbers are outdated or wrong. last night was a good example, when the mapquest directions said take a certain exit number to go toward my destination, but they had the exit numbers reversed (the map said "20A to Akron" but in the real world, it was "20A to Cleveland", "20B to Akron"). they also haven't caught up with the renumbering scheme on interstates.
all in all, there are problems and you shouldn't rely on mapquest if you are going someplace unfamiliar. use the local resources to double-check your information.
mp
"The secret to strong security: less reliance on secrets." -- Whitfield Diffie
Believe it or not, I have found that the Best Western hotels "Trip Planner" site is much better than Yahoo or Mapquest.
Turn by turn directions that are clear, uses freeways whenever possible, and simply does not usually make me do u-turns.
http://www.bestwestern.com/tripplanner/index.asp
At the very least, I use it for a second opinion. I wish I had used it the other day, as Yahoo got me thoroughly lost in the backwoods of Bethesda, MD. >:(
For US-based addresses it's either MapQuest or Yahoo maps. I think they are very simular.
For Dutch maps (where I live), I use locatienet or Andes. The first one being slightly better.
There are way too many options nowadays. See Oddens for a collection of links, including to historic maps (not useful if you just want to find an address, only for the curious of heart).
None of the online mapping services can touch DeLorme's Street Atlas USA. It ain't perfect, but it does a consistently better job of getting me places than anything else I've used. It's gotten to where people in my office come to me and ask me to plot routes for them. You can tweak Street Atlas USA for your preferences, avoid construction or bad traffic, and even add roads that are newer than the annual updates. I have a laptop mounted on a floor stand in my van, running Street Atlas USA connected to a GPS receiver. It's the ultimate "guy thing" because I never have to stop and ask directions!
Doug Pratt www.pratthobbies.com www.flyhybrids.org
my biggest problem is that I'd like to be able to set up waypoints... currently I have to print out X different sets of directions... seems to me like you should ba able to say: "give me directions from Boston, MA to Austin, TX but swing through Birmingham, AL and Slydell, LA" if I wanted... I mean jesus... that's 3 sets of directions
a more practical example would be:
tell me how to get from [my house] to [my girlfriend's] house with a stop by [the florist shop at this address]
Jeremy Logan's Website.
I have used all of the mentioned mapping programs and a few more.
MapBlast was my favorite.
It always had the most accurate directions. It used to let you plan a multiple stop route. And I loved the line drive directions.
But now that it is part of MSN...
Well honestly, I still use it. But I don't inhale...
Just another one to throw into the fray, but MapsOnUs (the backend site to Maps.com) has one feature that's invaluable to me -- it displays the lat/lon for every intersection along a route. For GPS tinkerers, it makes it nice to know the lat/lon of a place you've never been too, and with a few utilitys on the internet, you can even make it into a route for the crudest of GPS's.
I haven't found another that had the lat/lon easily displayable.
----- I hate sigs.
The problem is that there are not systems out there, that I know of, that provide information about quality, and that accept input from the user community to correct and adjust their data.
It's been one of my complaints for years, after a road trip to Texas from Kentucky -- on the way down, I found out just how bad the Arkansas interstates were [pot holes like DC, but it's a 70mph zone]. So I detoured on the way back, and found a 40mph single lane construction zone on the east side of Louisianna.
Although a road may 'work' in that it allows you to get from point A to point B, there are so many variables that you don't know about -- eg, when is their rush hour? [especially around DC, where things become impassible]. What construction is planned? How are the surfaces of the road? Are there reflectors? [for night-blind people].
For interstate construction info, most (possibly all) states have information on a website, but there needs to be ways to share that and work that into a GIS systems. For rush hour issues, the time that you start
your trip (and your prefered top speed), would be an issue, which makes the calculations more difficult, I would assume.
So, your suggestion would require not only having the walking route data, but also the extra functionality for subjective information about the routes. [Oh...and you'd also want to list which ones are handicap accessible, or that might be an issue for someone walking]
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
That is the ENTIRE route.
Suppose I know I'm at point A along the route. How far is it to point B - also along the route?
His points are valid ones.
Maybe its just me, but almost everytime I use mapquest (I live in NJ), it sends me through atleast 1 ghetto depending on how far I need to drive. That and its recommendation for getting on the garden state parkway for almost anything is a little bit absurd.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
I ran into this site a few days ago: http://www.idevio.com/demo/vmap0demo/
They seem to use a really cool compression and streaming algorithm for vector maps.
I'm with you there. I'd like to add that I also prefer the toned down color scheme that offers a bit more clarity. Typically I use Streets and Trips on both my desktop and my PDA (exteremly handy on the PDA) but when these aren't handy I always use Mappoint.
Does anyone know of any good alternatives to the "big two"?
For highway driving, I've found the absolute most accurate online tool is AutoPilot.
It's really only helpful in city-to-city routes (you can't search by address, only by town), but it's given me accurate results when both MapQuest and Yahoo! Maps would have sent me an hour or more out of my way.
That's what I rely on, Alpine DVD Navi!!!
This method of map drawing was so impressive that I would tell people to use MapBlast as opposed to any other mapping sites. To bad it is gone now.
I was hopeful that MS would keep this innovation when they bought MapBlast, but it seems that they simply redirected the URL and didn't absorb any technology. "Microsoft, where innovation goes to die."
Lasers Controlled Games!
The arial pix are pretty cool, but I am amazed at how old they are. I live in a new neighborhood that's been under construction for about five years and is near completion. In the arial pix my part of the neighborhood is still a forest with no roads, and the model homes up at the front are under construction, along with the first road. That definitely places the age of the pix between four and five years.
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
I loved MapBlast too, and am happy to report that Microsoft had the good sense to retain the LineDrive directions as an option (which I've used within the last week).
My favorite thing about LineDrive: it not only gives great napkin-style simple maps, it provides the name and location of the street which PRECEDES most turns. This has saved me many times.
get the coordinates of each of the targ.. ahem, "locations", and navigate from there. At Mach 3 there's not much room for error.
So, I use MapQuest now, works great. Yahoo (and any portal) would be well advised to check their site in a few minority browsers, especially the best one, if they want to maximize ad revenue.
One simple rule for its versus it's
However, I've stopped using them for directions because I've gotten two sets of terrible instructions from them where I wound up nowhere near the intended location.
Mapquest has never failed me for directions, though they often point you on a less-than-efficient route.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Having used Yahoo, Mapblast, MSN and Mapquest...often for the same trip. MSN seems to be the best. In terms of Map quality and resolution.
MapQuest isn't so bad if you click the "Big Map" button over on the right side of a given map, but the setting doesn't seem to be sticky across searches, and it really ought to be a user preference controlled by a cookie...
...Does anyone know of any good alternatives to the "big two"?
I've been using Maps On Us for a few years now as my primary mapping service. Stupid name but I really like the customization options, including the ability to set your default map size anywhere in the range from 250 x 250 up to 800 x 700. You can even choose the resolution anywhere between 30 and 300 pixels/inch.
I think you will find them in most 'Spanish discovered' areas.
Yep, there's a "Camino Real" in Boca Raton, FL, too. Guess it's not too unique.
You want a sig? I can get you a sig... Hell, I can get you a sig by 3 o'clock this afternoon... with nail polish.
Who knew that there were multiple Slashdotters in Downingtown? I had the same DSL issue when I moved to Downingtown in 2000. At least Comcast Broadband has stabilized somewhat.
90% of everything is crap. Also, crap is relative.
Regardless of whichever online map thing I use, however, I always use it only for a rough estimate. Then go to a real paper map and find the best route.
You must be a AAA member to use their TripTik service, which is available online, but I find them to be by far the best. MapQuest and Yahoo! Maps have gotten me in hot water by making errors, and also often don't give the most efficient routes. It is possible that the routes they give are the shortest distances, but often take longer due to traffic patterns (I can think of at least two examples of this within ten minutes of my house).
In contrast, AAA has never steered me wrong, supports multiple stops, and has features like the ability to select the easiest route to drive, and nearby attractions and restaurants. They also provide maps for every step of the way and highlight your route on them.
Hands down, Rand McNalleys online maps are faster and more accurate calculations. Also updated much more frequently.
Microsoft Streets 2004 is also a good offline system.
You can use MS MapPoint Online. It's the best one out there: www.mappoint.com
I use MSN's MapPoint (now called MSN Maps) because it provides the cleanest interface, better map scaling and more accurate directions.
Well, I have never used Yahoo! Maps until I saw your post. I tried mapping from home to work.
Overall, it worked and looked pretty -- but seemed to lack the one most important feature that Mapquest had. I didn't see any way to say "Avoid Highways". As such, the directions that Yahoo! Maps gave me would have taken me through 217 during rush hour. Not so good.
As a side note, I have only had problems with Mapquest about 3 times (except when someone gave me bad street names, read ST instead of RD, etc). In each of these instances, it was due to Mapquest telling me to turn from a highway onto a road that was actually an over/under-pass. Almost as if they had scanned in some map and didn't realize the roads didn't connect. It doesn't usually have this problem though.
Malachi
http://www.google.com/profiles/malachid
Just tried MSN with an OEM IE 5.5, and when I click on "Get Map" nothing happens. Get "error on page" in the status bar. Guess their attempt to screen out other browsers by using arcane HTML has bit them in the ass as well...
Except that it's adware, even after you pay for it.
I had a Vindigo subscription for a year, and it was useful, but I got so sick of the ads that I cancelled it anyway. When I wrote to them asking why they don't disclose this fact before you subscribe I was basically told that this is the way it is and if I don't like it I can cancel. So I did.
I like my women like my coffee... pale and bitter.
On one particular occasion, it told me to take certain streets to U.S. 101 South to I-10 East to S.R. 60 East to I-605 South to I-5 North to some other streets. All I had to do was take I-5 South to get to the same place.
What Yahoo needs to do is figure out how to minimize the number of changes between streets/roads. Directions that are five steps long, and involve taking only a few major streets, are infinitely easier to manage while driving than directions that have you turn at every other corner.
Then, Yahoo can improve further by figuring out how to measure traffic congestion patterns and then give directions based on that. Because in Los Angeles, it doesn't matter if you drive 26 miles or 42 miles to get to the same place. What matters is whether you're going 55 miles per hour or 15 miles per hour. But the computer, just by knowing the graph-like layout and connexions of the streets, in trying to find the "shortest path" as the horse runs, cannot figure out the "best" way, or even a reasonably good way, to get you there.
Frankly the map sites that serve the USA suck rotten eggs. They are of an utterly inferior when compaired with the quality of the maps you can get in the Great Britain
Yep, by far the best mapping site on the entire internet, serves full resolution digital 1:50,000 scale Landranger data as licensed by the Ordnance Survey for the whole of Great Britain. In addition to this it has half resolution Bartholomew road map data for the whole of Great Britain again, and after than there is also high quality half resolution Bartholomew streetmap data for Greater London. The rest of Great Britain is served with a automatic street level composite of varying quality.
The place to go is http://www.streetmap.co.uk
The Ordnance Survey themselves also serve up maps at a variaty of scales, most noticable a half resolution 1:25,000 version of the Explorer maps.
After that the next best map site on the internet is the ViaMichelin site. This has excellant quality road maps that cover all of western and northern europe, with street level mapping of superior quality to anything that I have seen served up for the USA. However recently they have updated the map browser and made it much less friendly.
How Far is It?
I love texas exaggerations. My favorite quote about texas -- a friend raised there saw a tiny drive-thru bank/booth on the east coast and said "see, in Texas, it would never occur to anyone to build a small bank."
Both services (Yahoo Maps and MapQuest) use the same mapping, geocoding, and routing engine provided by NavTech (Navigation Technologies). Even Rand McNally uses this service.
The only real differences are the final map rendering and the additional functionalities (Customization) added to the basic service.
Rand McNally offers the most pretty rendered maps of all three (Hands down). MapQuest are more simple but its service is faster. Yahoo Maps characteristics are in between.
If you compare the routes generated by the three services, you'll find that they are very similar.Rand McNally gives the most detailed directions af all three.
Yahoo Maps offers less detailed directions. MapQuest is in between, not as detailed as Rand McNally, but not as simple as Yahoo Maps.
At the end is up to you to make a trade off between practicality and prettiness, fast and reliable.
How can you joke about abusing a beautiful animal like a goat?
"That goat doesn't love you!"
-- Weird Al, from "Jerry Springer"
If you already have points A and B on your routes, just save your route, erase all the points you don't want and plot a new route, its not exactly a direct method but it can be done. This is probably easier than tracing over the area with the mouse.
There are two towns in Michigan named Podunk.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Point taken. You have to understand though, I'm married with a kid. Most of my "going out" these days consists of trips to WalMart for more diapers and groceries, with the very rare chance to spend a few hours over at a good friend's house.
Sometimes, I think it's better not having too much "fun" stuff to do all around me, because it's too frustrating to keep hearing about it when you have no way to enjoy it anyway.....
I've visited Kansas City, MO before. Personally, I had no big problem with it - except I'd say St. Louis has more in the way of "family" things to do (children's museum, for example, or our Science Center, "The Magic House", and so forth).
There's also some "culture" in St. Louis, but it just requires a little more digging - because it's rarely advertised. I took a poetry writing course in college, for example, and learned about all sorts of open-mic poetry nights and poetry workshops in St. Louis. Had no idea most of them existed before... There's also a bit of a jazz and blues culture here, if you know the right clubs to visit - but again, you won't hear them advertising on the radio.
I agree this isn't the end of the world, but the parent poster just wanted an easy way to click twice and get a number. It is a sensible feature, and one that MS would do well to include in a future version. It is hardly a make-or-break proposal.
I use randmcnallyatlas.com myself, having grown tired of Mapquest starting to screw things up after the first couple miles. But in fact, McNally does about the same thing occasionally. Not one of the map services I use is of any use once I get within a block of where I need to go, however. It's then I park, phone up my destination, and sob at them. :K)
The mapping services do a great job with interstates and highways though; they've never given me cause to complain about that.
Anima, who-obsessively-plans-every-turn