.KEYWORD techskeptic0600
.FLYINGHEAD TECHNOLOGY SKEPTIC
.TITLE Maps on your Palm device? Get lost!
.DEPT
.SUMMARY PalmPower’s resident technology skeptic has become lost in a gray void. At least according to the map he downloaded from MapBlast, that is. Both MapBlast and its better-known competitor, MapQuest, allow you to download maps and directions to your Palm device using AdvantGo. This month, Kevin Quin takes a critical look at these two Web sites that manage to lose both him and the entire Baltimore-Washington Parkway.
.AUTHOR Kevin Quin
Judging from the empty gray space on the map I downloaded to my Palm device, I’d think that Gertrude Stein’s casually acidic description of Oakland, "There is no there there," applied pretty well to my situation. But in fact, there was a there there, it’s just that MapBlast didn’t know it.
"There," in this case, was not a city, but Mickie Gordon Regional Park, a cluster of woods, baseball diamonds, and soccer fields outside Middleburg, Virginia. As I stood in the middle of it, my Palm organizer displayed a map downloaded from MapBlast (at http://www.mapblast.com), one of two Web sites that will install and display routes and maps on your Palm unit.
Now, I admit that MapBlast’s service–like that of its better-known competitor, MapQuest (at http://www.mapquest.com)–is free, and since beggars can’t be choosers, perhaps I shouldn’t complain. However, Middleburg, which for decades has hosted the hunt country homes of Washington’s movers and shakers, is not exactly the back of beyond. As such, I had been hoping for a route map that would show more at the end of the Yellow Brick Road than the modern-day equivalent of "Here be Dragons."
MapQuest wasn’t much better. It put a gray block on the map, but gave it the mysterious label, "Mercer Park."
Good thing I already knew where I was.
.H1 Less than stellar cartography
Therein lies the problem with both these services. While they are typically fast to download and easy to use, they suffer from the major defect that they’re often just plain wrong. That isn’t the fault of the Palm device version of these packages. Your handheld simply downloads a Palm device-friendly version of the same maps and routes that the Web sites would display on your PC. The problem is in the services themselves, which sometimes simply can’t find a destination. Even when they do, they often don’t seem to understand that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.
At least they’re easy to use, so that when they pick the right route, installation on your Palm device is a breeze. The only thing you’ll need is AvantGo, a software package that allows your organizer to store and display Web sites. I’ll talk more about AvantGo, one of the few must-have programs for us low-tech folks, in a future column.
.H1 How it’s done
Both sites offer stand-alone maps or routes with turn-by-turn directions. With MapQuest, the better known of the two services, simply go to the main Web site, pictured in Figure A, and select either Maps or Driving Directions.
.FIGPAIR A On the MapQuest Web site, choose between Maps and Driving Directions.
Feed it the requested address information, and MapQuest will take you to a results screen where maps and directions will be displayed. On the left side of this screen, you’ll see a box titled Directions Options. Select Download to PDA, and MapQuest will display a Palm screen-sized version of your maps and directions.
Give the map a title, click the Save Route button on the right of the screen, and MapQuest will call up the AvantGo software on your desktop PC and send the results to the AvantGo Web site. The next time you HotSync, the maps and directions will be automatically downloaded to the AvantGo application on your Palm device.
MapBlast works much the same way, except that you use a special section of the site called Pocket MapBlast. Click the tab on the main MapBlast page, pictured in Figure B, to get to Pocket MapBlast. There, you will discover a simple, fast-loading page that is blissfully free of advertising.
.FIGPAIR B On the main MapBlast screen, select the Pocket MapBlast tab.
Like with MapQuest, you fill out a simple form with address information, and you get a Palm screen-sized version of your maps and routes. Select "Download this page to my handheld," and your AvantGo channels page will open. Give the map a useful title, select Save Channel, and you’re done. The next time you HotSync, the maps and routes will show up on your Palm unit’s AvantGo program.
Both sites are easy to understand, but MapBlast is much easier to use because of its simple, low-intensity graphics. While MapQuest offers some minor additional features that MapBlast doesn’t have (choosing a route that avoids toll roads, for example), I find MapQuest pages slow to load. Too often, in fact, they don’t load at all because the server is down–probably because it choked while trying to spit out all those ads to a million users a day. The MapBlast site, in contrast, is blindingly fast.
Note also that while MapQuest implies that it can download directions with turn-by-turn maps, I was not able to do that. The directions downloaded with no maps, just as if I had requested directions only. MapBlast, in contrast, does offer turn-by-turn maps with directions.
To view your maps and directions on your Palm device, just open AvantGo. The Web pages are shown on your Palm unit with the titles you gave them on your PC. Nothing could be easier, right?
Unfortunately, saying it’s easy isn’t the same thing as saying it’s useful.
.H1 Small screen, big problems
There are two problems. First and most obvious are the maps. While the maps you see on your desktop PC are generally helpful, the maps on your Palm device tend to be unreadable. They’re simply too small. On the most magnified maps, which you would expect to offer the most detail, street names often disappear to save space. All you end up with is a display full of mostly unnamed gray lines, like in the MapQuest map you see in Figure C.
.FIG C On this MapQuest map, street names vanish, leaving indecipherable grid patterns.
On larger-scale maps, like you might use for driving between cities, the freeways are often given cryptic names or are simply unlabelled. Judging from the MapBlast map in Figure D, I would never know that I was driving on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, just south of I-95.
.FIG D The entire Baltimore-Washington Parkway has managed to get lost on this MapBlast map.
Directions are often problematic as well. I’ll give credit where credit is due, though. Both sites used to be even worse in this area. For example, shortly after MapBlast debuted, I tried to get some local driving directions and was told to "turn left" from a surface street onto Interstate 66. Never mind that I would have had to cross four lanes of freeway-speed traffic to do that–the intersection didn’t even exist! Those sorts of glaring errors are rare these days, but both sites still occasionally give bogus directions. You’d better double check with another source. Like maybe a human being.
That said, when the directions work, they can be quite handy. The sites display directions in somewhat differing formats. Figure E shows a set of MapQuest directions.
.FIG E Here’s a set of MapQuest directions.
In contrast, Figure F shows a set of MapBlast directions.
.FIG F Here’s a set of MapBlast directions.
I prefer MapBlast’s format, since it tells me exactly how far to go on each street, while with MapQuest I have to remind myself that the distance shown in the box is measured after I make the turn, not before. That’s a minor detail, however.
Of the two services, I think MapBlast is the winner. The site is much faster and more reliable than MapQuest, and on your handheld it can provide turn-by-turn maps that MapQuest doesn’t seem to offer. MapBlast’s directions also read more like plain English to me. However, MapQuest does appear to provide more details than MapBlast. As I mentioned, while MapQuest didn’t know the name of Mickie Gordon Park, at least it knew I was in a park. With MapBlast, it seemed, I had sailed off the edge of the earth.
.PAGE
.H1 Conclusion
The real question, though, is whether either service is useful. Having experimented with both, I can say that my AAA Triptiks have nothing to fear. The detail that you get in a real map is far superior to what you can get on your Palm unit’s tiny screen. I wouldn’t dream of trying to read maps on my Palm device while driving. Life is short enough as it is! Even with a passenger to do the Palm-reading, I would much prefer my navigator to be reading from a big, high-contrast paper map. (You can get paper maps, by the way, from both of these sites. Just print out the map instead of downloading it to your Palm device.)
To be fair, it can be helpful to have turn-by-turn directions on your Palm organizer, particularly if you’re staying in an unfamiliar city and walking to an appointment. Occasionally, I’ve even found it helpful to have the turn-by-turn maps. While walking, I can take the time I need to make sense of what my Palm unit’s little screen is telling me. While driving, I’m more likely to be trying to make sense of the road in front of me. Even when walking, though, I think it’s easier to print the directions and maps and carry them. Sure, you’re going to have some paper to keep track of, but that’s what pockets are for, right?
All things considered, in my opinion, when it comes to maps on your Palm device, you can’t get there from here.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
For more information on AdvantGo, visit http://avantgo.com/frontdoor/index.html.
For more information on MapQuest, visit http://www.mapquest.com.
For more information on MapBlast, visit http://www.mapblast.com/myblast/index.mb.
.H1 Bulk reprints
Bulk reprints of this article (in quantities of 100 or more) are available for a fee from Reprint Services, a ZATZ business partner. Contact them at reprints@zatz.com or by calling 1-800-217-7874.
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO Kevin Quin sometimes feels like a nowhere man living in the nowhere land of Washington, D.C.
.DISCUSS http://powerboards.zatz.com/cgi-bin/webx?13@@.ee6e334
