Paper might be passe but now you have to be able to navigate the Internet, and getting there will just be a few clicks away
Andy Riga
Sun
I love poring over my maps — street, country, provincial and state maps, even subway maps. Collected over 20 years, there are dozens of them, each conjuring up memories of past trips.
The collection is ironic, considering a colleague once dubbed me Wrong-way Riga because of the amount of time I spend lost at the wheel. These days, however, thanks to increasingly sophisticated online map sites, there is no excuse for getting lost. There is also less need for paper maps.
Today, interactive online maps offer precise, door-to-door directions, plus aerial photos and 3-D views of buildings to give you a feeling of where you’re headed. They’ll help you find hotels, restaurants, hairdressers, dry cleaners, whatever, along your road-trip route or near your destination. Some will alert you to potential delays on the road.
With laptops getting cheaper and smaller, and more hotels offering free in-room high-speed Internet access, more of us are travelling with computers.
THESE ONLINE MAP SITES CAN ACT AS OUR PERSONAL CONCIERGES:
– Windows Live Local (http://local.live.com) from Microsoft combines driving directions with local searching, Yellow Pages listings and satellite photos.
On this site, you don’t even have to know the address of your destination to figure out how to get there. Simply click on two locations — where you are and where you’re going — and the site offers up turn-by-turn directions, then allows you to search for nearby businesses along the way.
For U.S. cities, maps can indicate traffic jams and construction zones.
You can customize and save your maps, adding “pushpins” and text to particular spots — places to stop along a route, for example. They can be shared with others via e-mail or instant messages.
It also offers what it calls “bird’s-eye-view imagery” — crisp aerial photos taken at an angle that make it almost feel like you’re there — for parts of several big U.S. cities, including New York, San Francisco and Las Vegas.
– Google Maps (http://maps.google.com) has an approach similar to Windows Live Local — combining local business listings with street maps and satellite imagery.
With fewer bells and whistles, Google’s site has a cleaner layout and is easier to use.
Google also offers Google Earth, a virtual globe that provides driving directions with a difference. First, you’ll have to download a piece of free software that is available (http://earth.google.com) for Windows and Mac computers.
Click on “Directions” and type in start and end points. The software will plot your route and show it to you using satellite images. Then, you can follow the route from the air: Click the play button and you’ll feel like you’re flying there.
– MapQuest.com, launched in 1996, is the granddaddy of Internet mapping sites and still the most popular. It has added a few innovations of late, the most useful of which is its “multi-stop route builder.”
Road trips are rarely A-to-B affairs. There are often stops to make along the way or particular routes we like to take.
The new MapQuest features allow you to add up to 10 destinations along your route, making it easier to precisely plan your voyage. A few clicks and you can re-order your stops, with driving directions quickly recalculated. The multiple-stop feature is available only for Canada and the United States.
– Yahoo Maps is experimenting with a new version (http://maps.yahoo.com/beta) that lets you plot routes with multiple stops and includes a mini-map that makes navigating easier.
Yahoo has also integrated its mapping technology into its FareChase travel search engine.
When searching for a hotel, for example, you can scan the neighbourhood using satellite images, use an interactive map to get driving directions and instantly see whether your accommodations would be close to local attractions and restaurants.
– A9 Maps (http://maps.a9.com), by the people behind the Amazon.com online store, offers a neat service that combines clickable maps and driving directions with street-level images of streets in 24 U.S. cities, including New York, Boston and Miami.
Using trucks equipped with digital cameras, it took “BlockView” photographs of businesses around those cities and tries to give you the feeling you’re walking or driving on the streets.
– National Geographic’s online MapMachine (www.nationalgeographic.com/maps) is a must for anybody who is entranced by atlases.
It has interactive street and physical maps, as well as “theme maps” that overlay information about topics such as population density, habitats, temperature and environmental threats.
© The Vancouver Sun 2006
