Check out Google Maps. Slowly these folks seems to be offering everything that the portals of dot com days offer/used to offer, but with a distinctive class of their own. Here are some initial observations.
- Just as Gmail, Google Maps are easy to use once you get a hang of it.
- The satellite pictures are way cool!
- The maps views when you zoom in are nice and uncluttered and show you the street names very clearly.
- You can select the map that appears after you type in your start and end points and actually move it around with your mouse. Check it out, enough to give goose bumps!
- No matter what you do to the map, the directions that appear on the right of the screen always remain. This is a really nice feature, as opposed to the whole page refreshing.
- The links to start address and end address lets you zoom in on specific related to the roads at the two end points. Very useful feature.
- The ability to fire up the satellite picture within the inset/pop-up window while the map remains in the background is simply awesome.
- Can’t seem to print only the directions without the map view.
- I could not figure out the use of “Link to this page” feature. Didn’t see it in the help either. I didn’t spend too much time (who cares to read manuals anyway!) trying to figure this out.
Overall, I love Google Maps. Its amazing how these guys repeatedly figure out a better way to offer existing services. Impressive stuff!
Pakora Korner 