Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Google Maps and MapQuest Driving Directions

A lot of people hate driving I don't know why but it's true, it's probably because a lot of people lack that driving intuition that seasoned drivers like me posess. I'm the type of guy that never gets lost, for me it has always been easy finding alternate routes when I'm trapped in traffic jams, I've never had problems when trying to find new addresses or locations, it's like I was born with an internal GPS. Even though I have this natural driving ability since birth things have gotten a lot easier for me when I'm behind the wheel ever since I started using online mapping services like Google Maps and MapQuest. You have to understand one thing, people who have that natural driving skill are constantly under stress, they are very aware of their surroundings so you can't really consider them relaxed drivers, all they want is to get to their destination fast even if that means breaking some rules.

Google Maps and MapQuest are probably the best driving directions providers on the web, both of these sites offer high quality maps and advanced route planning softwares, all you have to do is enter your locations (from/to) hit enter and an easy to follow route will be immediately displayed on the map. The cool thing about these services is that they both offer turn by turn driving directions, that means that every time you create a route step by step written directions will also be displayed on the left column of your screen indicating which roads to take and where to make turns. Appart from that both sites offer a lot of different driving features and tools through their route planning options, you can avoid traffic (Google Maps now re-routes you automatically if there's a lot of traffic on your route), avoid tolls, highways, closed roads, timed restrictions, you can also choose the shortest distance or the shortest driving time. Both services offer multi stop route builders so you can add more than one stop to your route, I think Mapquest.com is currently allowing users to add up to 26 stops on one single route, and if you want you can reverse your route to get back to where your started your journey, these are probably the most perfect features for road trip fans.

There are many more features and many more tools that we haven't talked about yet, also a lot of people like to compare both of these services to figure out which one is the best, don't worry that's why we are here for to talk a lot about Google Maps and Mapquest so as time goes by and as the content on this blog keeps growing you will be able to find all the information you need to determine which one fits you best, I personally love them both, I use them both, and even though G-Maps is probably the better service right now Map Quest still has some tricks under their sleeve to impress more than one person, a good example is the addition of Skyhook technology for their mobile apps.

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