"TechPoint" - The techie edge

create your own personalized map of the USA

Nice service, you must check it out. FUN!

Being a voracious traveler, I had been using online mapping services like mapquest and google maps for a very long time. Even though I am not very bad with my directional sense, I've been lost terribly a few times with the printed maps. Carrying an atlas hasn't helped much either.

I recently bought a Garmin Street Pilot c330

This GPS unit is:
- portable (mountable on dash)
- preloaded with detailed maps
- touch screen display
- voice guidance
- vivid light sensitive graphics display

It's such a time saver. I just hop in to the car, punch in the address and the GPS tells me where to go turn-by-turn. I've been happy in terms of directions from Garmin as it sources from Navteq.
I am not sure where Magellan, Cobra and TomTom source from? I am very happy with Garmin and would like to hear about experiences from others.

I had been wanting to buy a GPS unit for a very long time, but kept procrastinating it for whatever reason. May be for the bells and whistles I wanted, the price was much higher. For me, the must features were, portability, touch screen, voice guidance, preloaded maps. Since I've gotten the unit, I feel stupid for not buying it early.

Anyway, the Garmin Street Pilot c330 has a retail tag close to $1000, but sells in amazon.com for just $299 with free-shipping and no sales taxes (Same thing sells in Best buy for $399 + sales taxes)

With the recent sales tax law, if a company has a physical location in a state it must charge sales tax on online sales as well. Amazon, however, does not have physical stores and so is not obligated to charge you sales tax :-)

If you are in the market for a GPS, I'd strongly recommend the Garmin Street Pilot c330 from amazon.

This is an interesting example of how funny it is that in spite of taking a straight route, we would take the highway just to pay the toll.

Not something we'd see very often. Look up this direction:

From
2222 S Wolf Rd, Hillside, IL
To
1432 butterfield rd, Downers Grove, IL (Best Buy)
Time: <= 10 mins.




On google maps it takes me to I-88, I pay toll, get off and reach my destination, same with yahoo maps and mapquest.

However on mapquest, I saw in brackets (portions toll). I was able to spot on the map that if I stayed on the same road without getting on to the highway I could reach my destination.
So I pulled up the shortest route and found the straight route without the tollway.

I would probably have least bothered to look at the shortest direction, if the (portions toll) flag did not appear as with google maps and yahoo maps. And, note that mapquest's shortest distance direction is just 3 steps while google maps takes you there in 10 steps through a tollway without even informing you.

The best thing I like about mapquest is that I can get my map according to my needs like shortest route, avoid tolls, etc.

Related post: Google Maps Vs Mapquest - what’s your pick?

Some of the popular mapping websites are Mapquest, Google Maps, Yahoo Maps, Mappoint, Ask, etc. While most of them source from Navteq or TeleAtlas; the way they are presented makes a huge difference in the user experience. Companies try to stay ahead of competition by doing something different. One common thing is to provide a feature that competitor’s don’t offer. But sometimes it leads to some interesting features such as ask.com’s map providing an option for walking directions.

For walking in downtown New York or Chicago or similar big cities this feature would be very useful and Ask.com is the only service that provides it.

An interesting direction would be 223 E Monroe St, Chicago, IL 60603 to 339 W Monroe St, Chicago, IL 60606. Compare between Driving directions and walking directions. Due to one way routes, driving directions are not the best to take if you plan on walking. Great!

I searched Ask’s map direction from Chicago, IL to Detroit, MI and just for the heck of it I clicked on walking directions and I found the time estimate as 125 hr. 20 min.

Now I would be curious to know who would walk so many hours?

The reason for my curiosity is Ask.com probably is optimizing routes for driving and walking, because the Chicago – Detroit driving directions shows a shorter route while walking directions shows a longer route may be due to the fact that you cannot walk on all the routes that you can drive.

Pretty much walking directions is the only feature that would attract you to Ask.com’s mapping site. There are no other standard features such as reverse directions which is a commonly used feature and available in other mapping sites.

Mapquest still stands as my top pick. Mapquest’s sole business is maps and they do a good job at that. Mapquest is the only service that allows you to perform advanced options such as Shortest Time, Shortest Distance, Avoid Highways , Avoid Tolls and Avoid Seasonally-Closed Roads. Mapquest may not be up to mark with the top notch technology such as ajax or flex, but they sure do provide good and accurate directions with some really good advanced options.

Related posts:
Yahoo maps beta released - feature rich
Google Maps Vs Mapquest - what’s your pick?

Google maps and mapquest, now seems all old school after the release of yahoo maps beta. Yahoo has come up with some really nice features. Competition has now become more stiff between rival companies. Here's a short comparision list.

A guy called Paul has come with a Craigslist-GoogleMaps combo site housingmaps.com.
The site provides the Google maps view of all the listings at Craigslist for the specific city you select.
At this time the website provides the following search filtering:
1. for rent, for sale, rooms or sublets
2. City: Has over 35 US cities and includes Toronto.
3. Price Range: You cannot specify a price range, but you can pick from the pre-defined list of price ranges.

I was a Mapquest user for a long time. Right after the release of Google maps, I jumped in to using Google maps, because it gave more visual directions.

Then, I noticed that Google Maps was not very impressive after all.

For the last one year, I had been traveling a lot and for every trip, I made sure to compare the directions of Google maps and mapquest. More than 95% of the time, I ended up choosing mapquest because it not only gave me the shortest route but also gave me the fastest route besides giving me good time estimates. There had been very few instances where I picked Google maps.

Just as an exercise, try to find the direction from Detroit, MI to Chicago, IL. Pull up the directions on Google maps and Mapquest. Here are the differences:

Now, compare the two maps and you will see that the two directions are entirely different. Mapquest takes you from Michigan to Indiana and then Illinois. Note that Michigan and Illinois have highway speed limits 70mph. Google maps will take you from Michigan through OH and then Indiana and then finally to Illinois. Note that Ohio and Indiana have lower speed limits 60mph/65mph and thus takes more time.

Another example, is Detroit, MI to Tallahassee, FL

Notice that in the above example both of them give about the same miles, however Mapquest estimates the total time to be 15 hours 53 minutes and Google maps estimates it to be 21 hour 13 minutes. Both of them pretty much give the same route. I found myself reaching my destination in about 15 hours and 30 minutes, close to Mapquest’s estimate and about 6 hours earlier than Google’s estimate. Now, that makes a big difference in my travel itinerary.

These examples are in favor of Mapquest. I did not find a strong example favoring Google maps. If you know of some favoring Google maps please comment to this post and I will rewrite this post with your comparison.

Go to http://maps.google.com and see for yourself.
Are you tired of mapquest and yahoo maps, getting all text directions,
turn left, right and not able to figure out where you are going?
Confused? Yeah, google is the solution. Google map gives you picture
perspective. You can look at maps and graphically interpret. It is
hard to explain all the features unless you explore it on your own.
But sure can tell you, you will know where you are going for sure!
Google maps is in beta. Can't wait for the final release!
Way to go google! You guys rock!