EB Misfit bemoans MapQuest's lack of brevity and common sense.
I'll chime in to add: not only does MapQuest tell me exactly how to pull out of my parking area, down the alley and on to the main road in front of my house...
...they give the WRONG directions to do so.
I like Google Maps better. It shows you the turn-by-turn, with the matching route superimposed on the map alongside. If you look at the map and see another (shorter) way, you can click and drag the route to match, and it'll tell you if the route you chose is shorter, longer, faster, etc. You can also select NOT to print parts of the turn-by-turn directions you don't need. Of course, I'm a guy, and we don't need directions anyway. :)
ReplyDeletePeople still use these sites? Three simple letters - GPS. Which, of course, will send me several miles out of my way - and in one instance, tell me to go back into New York from New Jersey in order to head back home to DC.
ReplyDelete(BTW, the dig at the end of the linked site was sort of annoying. But I can just substitute Keith Olbermann for Rush and call it even I suppose.)
I LIKE Mapquest. I regard it as a form of evolution in action. It keeps some people busy doing things other than breeding, which is likely to improve the species in the long run.
ReplyDeleteI've had mixed results with MapQuest, Google maps, and GPS. I know my city pretty well so I can tell if something's amiss, but MapQuest got me good and lost once trying to find something in the countryside outside San Diego - turned out the street I was looking for was so new it hadn't hit the map engines yet.
ReplyDeleteAnd we tried using the Garmin nav system in my brother-in-law's new Jeep to avoid some construction last spring. You know what? Those things update in "near real time". "Near real time" is a techy way of saying "this system is currently displaying stuff you passed 15 miles back."
Google Maps once took me on what appeared to be a shortcut. It would have been nice, except the road was closed by a locked gate. The signage indicated that it was the town that locked it.
ReplyDeleteSo the "shortcut" cost me about five extra miles.