Directions

This story from Morning Edition reminded me that my brother-in-law Stephen introduced me to something great on the Internet. I used to always use Mapquest to find directions. Then, I started using Google maps and really liking it. The initial draw was the satellite imagery, but really, who needs that? But I got used to the clean look and the elegant way the map refreshes as you slide one way or another or zoom in and out.

But then Stephen (a Yahoo employee) told me to check out the new Yahoo maps. Using Flash, the maps are nice looking than they used to be and have that instant refresh thing that Google has. Yahoo also has a neat Inset map which is helpful and the locate feature works pretty well. Another thing that's great is they let you map multiple stops. What would be even better is if you could "pick up" addresses from the map and insert them so you could see the route given, and if it passed near Fenway on a game day for instance, let you click on Storrow away from the park and insert that as your "B" address, between "A" and "C". When going to Scott's house in Orinda from Albany, I had to manually guess at an address to take us through the hills on Rte 24 rather than go over the hills (the latter route was calculated to be 1 minute shorter, but come on).

Also, given what was discussed in the NPR story, I hope they allow you to tweak the algorithm to your liking: more or less highway driving, etc.