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February 16, 2005
How pretty are the Google Maps!
Catching up on my feeds, I saw a post on Boing Boing about the Google Maps beta. To be honest, I haven't really been keeping up with Google's onslaught of beta's recently, including the controversial Google Scholar and the Google digitizing academic content bochinche. However, since I use maps all the time, especially when scoping out the commute on a job listing, and the online map sector is due for some innovation, I thought I'd take a peek. I gotta say, Google Maps beta is a smooth ride, with only a few pebbles in the road here and there, so I thought I'd share some observations.
When you first land on the home page, you see a map of the entire continental United States. Currently, Google Maps only covers the US, so don't go there thinking you can map your road trip to Toronto or anything. The interface is simple, well laid out, and relatively clear (especially because of the absence of ads and other distractions). The "Example Searches" search fields are pre-filled with text, to show you what kinds of searches you can perform, so the page isn't cluttered with tons of instructional text (which might be confusing for some users, but I think the majority would get it, since users seem to be responding better that sort of prompting). Best of all, the map is *always* the focus of the page.
The resolution on the map, in my opinion, is super sexy, even as you zoom in and out, or pan horizontally and vertically. The maps aren't choppy like the MSN Maps, or bitmappish like Yahoo! Maps. The fact that you can move around on the map using your *arrow* keys is so very keen and helpful, especially when you're trying to get a sense of an area, and it redraws *as you move*, without annoying page reloads. The map redraw rate is amazing on my cable modem connection, but I'd like to know what people think of the dial-up performance, especially at libraries without T1 lines.
I mean, imagine a traveller comes into your library, asking directions. You map them up, show the traveller, and zoom far in to be able to virtually walk them through it with just your arrow buttons. So cool.
The Google Local data is integrated with the Google Maps search, so that if you're looking for, say, sushi in Somerville, MA, the results show you a map with an upside-down red teardrop marker over each sushi restaurant's location, each noted with a different letter, and a list of corresponding location names and phone numbers on the right side. Clicking on a marker, either from the side listing (which will pan and center you on that location on the map) or on the map, pops up a speech bubble callout on the map, giving you the address, phone number, and URL of your chosen joint, as well as links for mapping directions to or from that location. Also in the speech bubble is a nifty "10 more" feature, which links you to 10 Google Local search results related to that business's name (including their site, reviews, articles, and such). Excellent for helping locals or out-of-towners plan where to go and how to get there.
Clicking on the directions links in the speech bubble brings up a search form right in the bubble, where you can enter the address at the other end of your trip. The search results then show up on right side of the map, basically never taking you away from the page, or the map. While each step in the directions is shown as text, clicking on a step will pop up a speech bubble on the map, showing you the "step-by-step" map for that particular bit, panning and centering to that part of your trip, which really shows you where you are on the map in the directions.
Too good to be true? Well, yeah. After all, it is a beta, and naturally there are downsides. But the downsides really are relatively negotiable and fixable, and my complaints are still laced with positives.
I was very curious about how these maps and directions would print, especially given the superhero dynamic panning capabilities. A print link does appear on the page, but it sends straight to your printer. Clicking print preview in Firefox showed me the map in all it's printer-friendly glory, thanks to the negative space happy HTML layout of the page. The cutey little speech bubbles don't print, though, and that's a minor downside. I'd really like to print a map with selected bubbles viewed, so I can run by several establishments using only one map, or have the "step-by-step" bubbles for particularly tricky legs of my trip. However, no matter where you've panned to on the map, even if you've panned away from your directions path, you will get whatever you see on the screen, map and text, when you print.
Linking to maps is a bit confusing. I noticed a few clicks into my playtime that the URL never changed from http://maps.google.com/maps. Then, I clicked on "Link to this page" near the top of the page, which basically pops the query string URL into the location bar of the browser. I'm guessing the idea is that you right click on it to copy the link location, or that you think to look at the location bar of the browser to see what's changed, but either way, it's not totally obvious.
Google Maps, even as a beta, is a fabulous reference tool, and a fun toy. Quoting Xeni Jardin, "It does not suck at all." Perhaps I'll go poking around to see what the other map sites have in the hopper for improvements and "competitive advantages", unless someone else already has...
February 16, 2005 11:39 AM