Goodbye Mapquest

I don't know. The distinguishing factor seems to be bigger maps, which is cool in itself, but the actual map database and addresses are just as (in)accurate as the Yahoo's and MapQuests. The scrolling javascript UI is nice, but they traded compatibility for it. The thing doesn't work in Safari at all.

Cool. Thanks for the tip. Playing with it now, and I'll post my impressions as I go along at www.geekblog.org

Josh Bancroft
www.tinyscreenfuls.com
www.geekblog.org

NAVTEQ need to have a process for user submissions to update their maps. I live in a newer neighborhood (about 5 years old) and none of the streets show up. I've seen an example on TV recently of them updating the street data around Soldier field in Chicago after they renovated it. They had a standard GPS devise hooked up to some software and just drove around the area as they added the street names.

The click and scroll the map feature is pretty sweet. To take that even further they need to add support for holding down shift, ctrl, etc plus click and drag for zooming in and out.

This is cool. I think Google has ensconced themselves as being the last to come out with the best products.

Heh, yeah -- the early worm gets eaten, and all that.

Matt, did you notice you can zoom in and out with the + and - keys? There are a few hotkeys.

I love being able to get directions as easy as typing "123 any st 94043 to sfo". And I love the turn-by-turn popups. And... :)

That was easy. ActiveX or plugin permission prompt, click no, big gray box and nothing else, go elsewhere.

While I'm bummed about no Safari support, it is still very cool. Once you learn how to phrase the search, wow.

I wish I knew why my TrackBacks to you don't work.

http://joseph.randomnetworks.com/archives/2005/02/07/google-maps/

More javascript goodness. I'm liking those popup windows with the cool shadows. Go go gadget Google.

I don't know about old map data. I live in a city that is less than 3 years old, and Google's maps are the only one that have my address. Not exact, but within a tenth of a mile.

Mapquest and MapPoint point my address on the map 10 miles from where I really live.

Google, Yahoo and MapQuest all use Navteq's map data. Apart from how they are presented there shouldn't be any difference apart from how often they update from Navteq I suppose.

Of course, Mapquest recognises that there are countries outside of the US, whereas Google Maps doesn't...

IMHO http://map.search.ch/index.en.html still manages to beat it.

Adarsh is right - that Swiss map just rocks.

AND it works in Konqueror (unlike Google Maps - shame Google, shame....)

The Map tool from google is amazing , sure that it'l kick up dirt on this front and pave the way for yahoo to come up with something better .

The tricky bit about not handling Canada is that it affects Americans too -- especially around the Great Lakes, the sensible way from point A to B can easily be to cross the border twice.

The user interface bites: the low-contrast map made me push my laptop display way back, streets with text on them are really wide, the zoom "slider" does nothing if you don't slide to the next zoom level (why not have buttons, then?), the four-arrow button *loses where I was* and I can't even click to zoom.

Google's usually better at product differentiation than this.

Hah, wait, Canada *is* included, they just don't tell you that on the first map you see! That's silly, but a nice surprise.

The UI is nifty, but until I get a "Download to PDA" function like I do in MapQuest I don't switch.

That's funny you would be talking about MapQuest -- I've always used maps.yahoo.com instead.

RE: submitting feedback to Navteq
http://update.navteq.com/

They take forever to respond to it though. Makes me wonder if a grassroots map data effort would work. As storage and bandwidth approach free, and GPS winds up in everything, it might be possible.

MapQuest has programming API and XML solution for its clients to use their system. Google local actually use MQ their engine; two years ago, Yahoo! uses MQ for their maping too, the later developed their own tool. Our company is using MQ for store and garage sales maping, and MQ stuff is great and its documentation is thorough and easy to follow. From that perspective point of view, MQ has doing a very awesome job. of course, we are paying MQ $$$/yr.

I've been playing with it for a few minutes and I like what I see so far. Clear and large maps, scrolling view, popup directions, and flexibility for destination are all nice features.

It will be interesting to see how quickly this new service from Google takes off.

Apologies if this is old, but I thought it funny when I read your post and had this in my email at the same time.

http://mappoint.msn.com/(gtwvhg3euanged551zgxz2u5)/DirectionsFind.aspx

Enter the following search criteria:

Start of journey:
Country – Norway,
City – Haugesund.

End of journey:
Country – Norway,
City – Trondheim.

Then press "Get Directions",

-- Guy