I'm doing a term project evaluating the usability of various online map websites. I have a short survey and it would be totally awesome if you filled it out
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I took the survey since I won't be in Maryland next week. :( There wasn't a spot for comments, so I thought I'd just leave them here. Even though I'm a Microsoft employee (and could potentially be biased), I like the Google Maps interface more. It could be because it shaped my idea of what an online mapping program should be by being the first interactive online web application of it's kind. It is very similar to local.live.com though. Each has features the other doesn't. Google maps supports multi-destination routes. This is very useful when I started planning my cross country trip. Local.live.com does not. But local.live.com supports saving collections of locations. This can be really useful when saving a set of restaurants you plan on going to or a set of shops you plan to visit that day. You just can't plot directions between them.
I perfer Microsoft's tool myself. Google always overestimates time for its directions. By a lot. Microsoft's is a bit more accurate. Also, while Google has nice top-down color photos of metro areas, if you aren't looking at a metro area, you can't see any detail. Microsoft has black and white pictures of pretty much everywhere, and they have awesome Pictometry pictures of metro areas.
Live search is based off of MapPoint, which is really nice. I have MapPoint 2004 and I pretty much use only that for directions, and I go to the web when I want to see aerial photography. MapPoint supports multiple destinations as well as pretty much any conceivable feature a map application has (finding nearby places on the route, drive time zones, even mapping of demographic and custom data.) It would be nice if they moved some of these features into the online tool.
Comments 4
nice new icon. where'd you make that?
also...both pat and i are in for next thursday. he doesn't have class.
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we didn't do so well last night (but we weren't the worst!)
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I took the survey since I won't be in Maryland next week. :( There wasn't a spot for comments, so I thought I'd just leave them here. Even though I'm a Microsoft employee (and could potentially be biased), I like the Google Maps interface more. It could be because it shaped my idea of what an online mapping program should be by being the first interactive online web application of it's kind. It is very similar to local.live.com though. Each has features the other doesn't. Google maps supports multi-destination routes. This is very useful when I started planning my cross country trip. Local.live.com does not. But local.live.com supports saving collections of locations. This can be really useful when saving a set of restaurants you plan on going to or a set of shops you plan to visit that day. You just can't plot directions between them.
Reply
I perfer Microsoft's tool myself. Google always overestimates time for its directions. By a lot. Microsoft's is a bit more accurate. Also, while Google has nice top-down color photos of metro areas, if you aren't looking at a metro area, you can't see any detail. Microsoft has black and white pictures of pretty much everywhere, and they have awesome Pictometry pictures of metro areas.
Live search is based off of MapPoint, which is really nice. I have MapPoint 2004 and I pretty much use only that for directions, and I go to the web when I want to see aerial photography. MapPoint supports multiple destinations as well as pretty much any conceivable feature a map application has (finding nearby places on the route, drive time zones, even mapping of demographic and custom data.) It would be nice if they moved some of these features into the online tool.
Reply
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