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Beside the Fold
By Cameron Ferroni | October 2, 2007
I’ve been struggling a lot with maps lately. It’s just one more example in a long list of how putting things online makes them both more and less convenient at the same time. Case in point. I spent the weekend in Boulder, CO, and I needed a map. I needed the map to cover four basic things - first off, where was my hotel? Second, I had three runs that I might do while I was there, and I needed to figure out where the trailheads/parking lots were. Now in the old days, I would have bought a street map of Boulder, got out a pen, marked the four spots, and been done with it. But this is the 21st century, and I’m in the biz, so of course I’m going to use technology.
The first part is easy, I simply type in the hotel to a search engine, find it, click on the map link, and voila, I have a map. But hmm, now I need to find all of my other locations, and that map doesn’t help me. So I go find a mapping site - not hard these days of course - type in the address of the hotel, and cool - it gives me a map, with the hotel clearly marked. Unfortunately, the actual map only takes up something like 40% of the screen real estate, not counting the massive “post-it” style image that is covering half of the map, showing me the address of the hotel and plenty of whitespace to add more notes. So I go find another mapping site. OK, this one devotes a little more space to the actual map, that’s a good thing.
Next up, I have to plot my other points. Hmm, that is actually really hard - some of them aren’t within the limits of the map as I’m looking at it - how do I get those on there? Oh, do a search in another window, find that place, zoom my main map out until I can see it, and put a pushpin in. Hmm. Do that three times. OK, now at least I have a map that shows everything. But wait - the thing is so small that I can’t actually read any of the street names anymore (let’s be clear, my two furthest points were less than 10 miles apart - not an unreasonable distance). So what do I do? I futz for a while trying to change the size, and end up printing it out - it still doesn’t fill a whole page since the map provider feels the need to waste a bunch of space printing their logos all over the page - and then end up writing all of the names of the key streets on the map, so that I know where I’m going (sometimes I copy the image into a graphic editor and type the information on, but I was running out of time).
When it comes to local, one of the most important things I need is how to get there. Online maps offer a level of convenience that I’ve never had before, and they are a lot easier to fold. But there’s still room for improvement to truly replace the paper.
Topics: Local Search |
October 5th, 2007 at 5:52 pm
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