Kind of makes me want to go back to printing 6 page instructions to destinations that I hold in my right hand and read whilst driving with my left hand.
You might want to do that anyway. You know, in case everything does get shut down. I know people who can’t navigate their own city without GPS for the life of them.
I can draw a usefully realistic map of every city I’ve spent significant time in. I can also drive around a city as big as Los Angeles without GPS (though some of the fucking freeway exits in this town are fucking ass backwards).
So when I’m in a taxi this weekend in a different city (not an Uber, an actual licensed cab) and he can’t even figure out where you want to go when showing him the map with the location… wow. He never actually did figure out where we wanted to go, we just held the phone for him so he could follow the GPS directions to one of the more popular neighborhoods in the town he drives in professionally.
I kind of did this with sticky notes on the dash during my last road trip. I was travelling through an area I knew would have poor reception at the time, so I made a bullet point list of the main road changes.
It was kind of nice not having to check a screen for directions.
Writing the directions down on a paper is still more convenient than taking out and unlocking ypur phone if a) you’re on a bike; b) if it is cold out and you don’t want to take off your gloves.
I used their mapping and geocoding APIs for years, back when I was negotiating contracts. They’re good (at least in N. America) and 1/5th the price of google.
TIL MapQuest is still around.
Right? It’s a darn fine marketing effort.
Kind of makes me want to go back to printing 6 page instructions to destinations that I hold in my right hand and read whilst driving with my left hand.
You might want to do that anyway. You know, in case everything does get shut down. I know people who can’t navigate their own city without GPS for the life of them.
OpenStreetMaps works well, and OrganicMaps is really nice to use on mobile (same data, available offline).
I can draw a usefully realistic map of every city I’ve spent significant time in. I can also drive around a city as big as Los Angeles without GPS (though some of the fucking freeway exits in this town are fucking ass backwards).
So when I’m in a taxi this weekend in a different city (not an Uber, an actual licensed cab) and he can’t even figure out where you want to go when showing him the map with the location… wow. He never actually did figure out where we wanted to go, we just held the phone for him so he could follow the GPS directions to one of the more popular neighborhoods in the town he drives in professionally.
I kind of did this with sticky notes on the dash during my last road trip. I was travelling through an area I knew would have poor reception at the time, so I made a bullet point list of the main road changes.
It was kind of nice not having to check a screen for directions.
Writing the directions down on a paper is still more convenient than taking out and unlocking ypur phone if a) you’re on a bike; b) if it is cold out and you don’t want to take off your gloves.
I used their mapping and geocoding APIs for years, back when I was negotiating contracts. They’re good (at least in N. America) and 1/5th the price of google.
They have an app