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Robespierre-
Yes, but can I do it all for $5.95 (the cost of the pocket map I listed above) without buying a PDA or cell phone I can use in Europe? What if I don’t want to buy one only for travel? I have a Palm PDA, but it won’t work with the Microsoft street maps you always recommend. It has wifi, but it’s not a cell phone, so it’s not always connected and thus I cannot access Google maps online while I’m on the street. I can buy map software, but it's very expensive and since I don't have GPS built in, I still would have to figure out where I am on the map. Please don’t recommend I buy a different PDA. I won’t use it in my everyday life. I already don’t use the one I have. For me, it’s just easier and faster to look at a paper map. Plus, I can walk around with it in my coat pocket and not be worried I’m going to lose it or have it stolen. Can you get the same maps for your PDA you use in Europe for Asian cities as well? I travel a lot in South East Asia. Do you have street maps in English for Bangkok, Siem Reap and Hanoi? Can you download them for free? Just wondering, do you feel the same about books printed on paper? Newspapers? Do you only read books on computer or handheld reader? Do you only read news online? Are you completely paperless in your life? |
Yes, but can I do it all for $5.95 (the cost of the pocket map I listed above) without buying a PDA or cell phone I can use in Europe? What if I don’t want to buy one only for travel? <i>I think a "traveling computer" that integrates data, entertainment, and navigation functions is as essential as a suitcase. It's one way that I can easily pack for a week in a carry-on - I don't fill up the space or weight with a bunch of wood pulp.</i>
I have a Palm PDA, but it won’t work with the Microsoft street maps you always recommend. <i>There are plenty of mapping apps for the Palm.</i> It has wifi, but it’s not a cell phone, so it’s not always connected and thus I cannot access Google maps online while I’m on the street. <i>Then download the maps you need when you're in a hot spot.</i> I can buy map software, but it's very expensive and since I don't have GPS built in, I still would have to figure out where I am on the map. <i>That's true. I think GPS is essential to modern travel.</i> Please don’t recommend I buy a different PDA. I won’t use it in my everyday life. I already don’t use the one I have. <i>You'll spend thousands to go places, but not a few hundred to maximize your travel dollar. Okay.</i> For me, it’s just easier and faster to look at a paper map. <i>Quick! Plot me a route from Liverpool Lime St. to Penny Lane.</i> Plus, I can walk around with it in my coat pocket and not be worried I’m going to lose it or have it stolen. <i>I do the same with my electronics.</i> Can you get the same maps for your PDA you use in Europe for Asian cities as well? <i>No. Why does that matter?</i> I travel a lot in South East Asia. Do you have street maps in English for Bangkok, Siem Reap and Hanoi? <i>I've never looked. But I have used downloadable maps in Taipei.</i> Can you download them for free? <i>Yup.</i> Just wondering, do you feel the same about books printed on paper? <i>Yes.</i> Newspapers? <i>Yes.</i> Do you only read books on computer or handheld reader? <i>No.</i> Do you only read news online? <i>When I can.</i> Are you completely paperless in your life? <i>To the extent that I can be, yes. But just because I can't do everything I want to with electrons doesn't mean I have to abandon them entirely.</i> <b>May I reiterate? All of my travel documentation except what governments or carriers require <u>takes up the space of a deck of cards and weighs 5 ounces.</u></b> |
Lots of interesting replies.
First, Blackduff - you're right, no polling agency in their right mind would consider this a proper poll. On the bright side, nobody is going to accuse me of failing to properly count the hanging chads.... Robespierre - ah, Robes, what would we do without you, ever the passionate electronophile. But just how would your namesake deal with a digital, as opposed to analog guillotine? ;) Seriously, for the purpose of this thread it is the way people want to see their information presented that matters, not so much what medium (paper or silicon chip) is used. Sure, I value the accuracy of GPS or Satnav. But I like paper, as a good picture - and that can include hand-drawn diagrams - can still be worth to me not just a thousand words, but a thousand GPS coordinates.... kja, - yes, in general I was thinking of city/town maps, since these tend to be the most common scale of map found in guidebooks. You also mention a major pitfall of eliminating information in the interest of clarity - since the user, of course, has no idea of how much information (one, two, or n intersections between points A and B) was omitted. Felschurch and others - aye, here's the rub. Can one have a multi-purpose map that isn't hopelessly overloaded, such that one can find the trees in a a huge forest of information? Katie suggests some transparent layovers to show transportation systems. The thing is, Harry Beck's London tube map is a masterpiece precisely because it doesn't attempt to provide geographic information as well as the stops. It's been so successful that it became the gold standard for every metro map made since..... On the other hand, I love those free maps of Paris given out by Galleries Lafayette - the ones with drawings of the landmarks superimposed right on the map, along with numbers keyed to a table of metro stop names. And it's clear, but alas, it won't help with kja's conundrum. |
Are you completely paperless in your life? <i>To the extent that I can be, yes. But just because I can't do everything I want to with electrons doesn't mean I have to abandon them entirely.</i>
Bravo! Me neither. That's why I travel with a digital camera and a very small laptop. That's also why I have no problem at all using a paper map on the street. For me, the $5.95 map maximizes my travel dollar. Not everyone uses technology in the same way. Not everyone is as comfortable with it as you or as I am. Your methods are not going to work for everyone. Maybe we are luddites, but so what? It's all a matter of preference. Why don't you read books on an e-reader instead of on paper? I don't, because I'm not "comfortable" with it. I would think you would be though, since you are so comfortable doing everything else that way. Let me know if you can find free downloadable maps for my Palm PDA. I haven't found any. Better still, maps in English for the Asian cities I mentioned. Even Google maps are in Thai for Bangkok (frustrating as I'd like to create a personal Google Map for BKK as I've done for Rome but it's not possible since I don't know Thai script). |
"Quick! Plot me a route from Liverpool Lime St. to Penny Lane."
Sorry, Robes. I've got it here in my hand before you even got your power switched on. And I can easily carry it between my third and fourth fingers. I made it special. Yes, I am looking at it now. Just how fast can you write with a stylus, anyways? I've owned three PDAs over the years. The last one went into the bottom of the drawer four years ago. NONE of my essential travel documents are even available in electronic form. My 1959 Blue Guide, my Pevsner, my copy of "Pies and Prejudice", my maps -- yes, you can get the OS maps electronically, for a price, but that three-inch LCD is a handicap for me, compared to this nice foldout 30" square. Electronic maps are wrong sometimes too. Funny you should mention Liverpool because Google for instance has some grotesque errors (off by fifty miles or so) in the Liverpool area. |
Okay.
Quick! Plot me a route from Hbf Bonn to the Venusberg Sofitel. "Just how fast can you write with a stylus, anyways?" I don't write with a stylus, because my PPC has a keyboard. Here's a picture of it: http://h20331.www2.hp.com/Hpsub/cach...0-225-121.html |
Oh, jeez. That's not a keyboard. That's a thumbboard, like a crackberry or something. Have you had your thumbs surgically altered like this guy?
http://tech.monstersandcritics.com/n...le_1342401.php The best thumbboard is about a third as fast as a proper keyboard, and a jillion times slower than an eye movement. |
Hbf. Sofitel. Go!
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Too hard?
Varenne to Hoche. GO! |
If I wanted to go to any of those places, and I couldn't find a decent map I liked, I would do what I did in Liverpool, and print out some custom maps, and carry them with me.
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fnarf999
"just how fast can you write with a stylus, anyways?" Someone after my own heart. The &%^! stylus of my Palm Pilot drives me crazy. I feel like a Lilliputian pigeon, pecking away at keys I type by touch when on the laptop. And don't get me started on the script. So my Palm sits even now in a lonely perch on a bookcase, looking at me reproachfully like the discarded suitor it is. But I didn't really mean to start a war between those that love their gadgets and those that like information formats that take advantage of the versatility of the human brain. As I said before, it really doesn't matter whether how the map is stored; it is the design that matters. I think guidebook maps, given space limitations, might be best suited for 'pre-trip' learning about the basic layout of a city. Learning basic orientation, especially for a quick trip, needn't involve a lot of detail. But after I read the array of comments criticizing the lack of detail, I wondered if many people simply didn't find this a useful application for a map. |
"If I wanted to go to any of those places, and I couldn't find a decent map I liked, I would do what I did in Liverpool, and print out some custom maps, and carry them with me."
Ah. But what if (and this has happened to me, and more than twice) you don't know until you're on the scene that you have to figure out that route? By the way, look at a Paris Métro map and see how long it takes to figure out that last one - without using a computerized route finder. No - being able to navigate from where you are, and not where you like to think you plan you'll be, is an important capability. |
It's simple, Robes...real-live paper/laminated maps are sexy. Computerized stuff is not. Those of us who grew up putting push pins in maps scotch taped to the walls and dreaming of where we wanted to go in the world or diagramming where we'd already been just cannot, and will not, relate to the electronic substitute.
One of my absolute favorite activities in life is sitting on a bench in a city or on the grass on some mountainside with a glass of wine and some cheese and bread, hunkered over a Michelin map deciding whether I'm going to go this way or that and checking out what I will encounter on each route. There's something absolutely elemental and satisfying about tracing the route, evaluating the choices, imagining the routes...there is nothing, nothing in cyberspace that could ever substitute for that, nothing. I love the feeling of the paper, the crinkle of the map as you fold it this way and that, the math I need to to to figure out the scale. NOTHING electronic can ever be better than that for me, though I am wired to the max in my business life 24/7. There's no reason to act superior to those of us who like a paper map. It's not like you get superior travel experiences because you eschew paper, you know. I'll add that I like Michelin maps for distance travels and Streetwise maps for cities. |
"Those of us who grew up putting push pins in maps scotch taped to the walls and dreaming of where we wanted to go in the world or diagramming where we'd already been just cannot, and will not, relate to the electronic substitute."
But I AM one of those of us... and I think using computers is every bit as involving as poring over crinkly paper. If you saw my computer, you'd know what I meant. Mine has a little more brocade and slate in it than this one: http://www.newsweek.com/id/67186 "There's no reason to act superior to those of us who like a paper map. It's not like you get superior travel experiences because you eschew paper, you know." It's not <i>me</i> I think is superior - it's carrying all my books and movies and guides and maps and tunes and and and in a shirt pocket that I think is better. Read and reflect on what I said above concerning the weight and volume of wood pulp compared to silicon bits. It's the ultimate in packing light. |
There are all kinds of good maps.
In the front of my address book (yes, I still keep a bound address book even though I have duplicate info in the computer) is a 3x6 map of Manhattan with only the zip codes. In my wallet is a 2x 6 folding subway map - for emergencies, as when in or headed to a neighborhood whose stations I don't know. I like Streetwise maps, and my Popup map of Rome has been scotch taped and reinforced. Love a map like that that folds to shirt pocket size. Insight guides are known for photos but also have excellent maps. Their city maps are intelligently colored and their road maps are not bad at all - when planning a day or reviewing the past day at evening, it's handy to have both at hand. Coloring and font choices are as important as any other detail in map design - if I can't read it easily, what's the point? Which also applies to some over-illustrated maps. That said, icons can be extremely helpful in a "tourist" map. Put that dome or cross at the location of churches, the obligatory "M" on metro stops, etc. Also appreciated: an H for hospitals (or similar code) etc. Got something not long ago called the "Silver Linings Best Map of Tuscany" - not so sure about that claim. The road map looks ago (haven't had the chance to use it yet) but the Firenze map is hard to look at. It's apparently by Mapquest for Silver Lining Books. Green Guide books have darn good maps in color - face it, one color or b/w maps are harder to use, unless they have very little in them.GG also mixes up road, city and occasional special maps. DK (Doris Kindersley) Guides are heavily illustrated and that includes maps. The "bird's eye view" drawn maps are OK, if not my favorite. But they also include good transporation maps, city by area etc. Their back-of-book maps and "end paper" maps are great. National Geographic guidebooks, good selection of maps, though I don't care for the "walking tour" approach for myself. Still, well-drawn and easy to read. Some things I like about paper maps: marking them; traces a route with my finger; referring back at end of day. For my use, electronic maps and paper maps are not actually great substitutes for one another - except maybe for navigating. Even then, sometimes it's nice to have that paper copy for reference to see where you went wrong ... and in spite of the zoom/scroll capabilities of electronic maps, it is easy to lose sight of the "big picture". I love showing a map to a local (whether in rural USA or the streets of Paris) to allow them to show and tell. And again, to "mark the spot." |
tomassocroccante
"If I can't read it easily, what's the point?" That's the big challenge of maps. Like highway signs, legibility is critical, particularly for maps used under some degree of time constraint. But on larger scale maps (but not too large like the Michelin 'orange' - formerly yellow - series) icons can be extremely handy in planning itineraries. Grace a the little 'dolmen' icon (which, alas, Michelin seems ready to drop using) I learned about the Dampmesnil megalithic site near Les Andelys/Giverny, France. We enjoyed the short walk through the woods to see the remains of this 'allee couverte' (ancient burial chamber.) ***** Robes, you are right that sometimes GPS is extremely handy. The other megalithic site we searched for we never found, because the very local, how-to-find-it map provided by the small prehistoric museum in Guiry-en-Vexin turned out to be hopelessly inaccurate, as a subsequent foray to Google Earth proved. (Made for an interesting walk in the pasture/woods though....) For one thing, the museum didn't follow the convention of orienting the north-south axis along the long axis of the page. (It didn't even indicate north at all.) Had we used the coordinates supplied by a megalithic afficiandos website in conjunction with a GPS unit, we would of course have been much better served. ******* There's no contest going on here - the thread isn't about winning or losing! But a lot of why people use information in the way that they do has to do with what they find <b> pure fun </b>. As tomasso and others point out, there is sensual pleasure in the use of a good paper map. The smell of the paper, the lovely crinkling sound as one fondles it in one's hands, the lightning-quick adaptation of the eye as it scans a page too large to be displayed in small hand-held electronic units. The connection one feels with explorers past, particularly the ones who charted the world, who made their maps works of art. In my mind's eye, I see the maps of yore, often heavily illustrated with local flora and fauna, and sometimes with dire warnings about as-yet uncharted territory: <b> "Here Be Dragons." </b> Now, THAT's a map feature we could use. We've all run into our share of 'dragons' on our travels.... |
Hi again, Sue 0
>> I think guidebook maps, given space limitations, might be best suited for 'pre-trip' learning about the basic layout of a city. Learning basic orientation, especially for a quick trip, needn't involve a lot of detail. But after I read the array of comments criticizing the lack of detail, I wondered if many people simply didn't find this a useful application for a map. I do use maps extensively for pre-trip planning - and I want detail for that! With a large city - say Paris or London - I find an overview map for basic orientation very useful. For smaller places, details don't prevent me from getting an overview. |
Sue_
I bought the <u>Rand McNally Atlas of the World</u> (probably 300 coffee-table-book-sized pages) the day it hit the stores forty years ago, and I still enjoy opening it at random and wandering for a while in the history and lore as you suggest. Amazon has a Millennium Edition (1586632426) I may have to tell Santa Claus about :) But for practical navigation, I'm all-electronic. As you mentioned, finding points of interest amid the clutter is sometimes problematical, and my sofware is very humane in this respect - because I can hide or display any one or any number of classes of POI with a checkbox. So if I want to see only Tube stops, I tick that box. Only libraries, same deal. For me, this single functional difference makes using highly detailed maps pleasant rather than painful. And don't even get me started on the value of typing in an address and having the screen zoom directly to it. Here's what my screen looks like when I'm at my Montparnasse student digs: tinyurl.com/2om9d3 I can also add POI to the categories that are already there - or define my own categories. For me, paper is for birdcages (not really, but I do indulge in a little hyperbole occasionally). |
I guess I'll step in on this one.
Let's see, I started using "computers" in about 1968. I started writing software in the late 1970s. I owned an electronic publishing and duplicating store in 1985. I was one of the original beta testers of Mosaic. I built advanced products for several defense contractors and NASA. I own 2 servers, 4 desktops and 2 laptops. I run 7 websites, develop online courses for several universities. I collaborate with several universities in synchronous communications systems. I guess I have a pretty good background in technology. I always bring my laptop with me, but I always print out a HARD COPY MAP of the city(ies) I'll be in. It makes it real easy to just fold up this 60# glossy cardstock with a full color map of what I want and stick it in my back pocket. Paper doesn't need batteries. Paper doesn't short out. Paper doesn't break when you drop it on the ground. :-) dave |
Sweet writing from sweet Sue ...
My appreciation for maps extends to making them. I was an official map-maker for a few years as graphic artist to a TV news program. But those were basically "locators" with just one place identified on the map, or animated pictures showing which highway routes were closed after the spring flood ... The fun maps I've made have more in common with a pirate's "buried booty" scroll: directions to a party or weekend away, where the proper turnoff is illustrated as the one between the grey stone church and the Hooters billboard. As to planning, reading is great, ditto photos - but a map! How great to arrive in a place the first time and know already that The Bronx is "up" and the Battery "down." To have in your head the spiral of the arrondissements or the sense in planning a morning at the Vatican and lunch on the Esquiline. And now the internet - where comparing hotels, apartments and restaurants now includes immediately seeing just where they are ... on the noisiest corner, the dingiest canal, described as "near the station" but in fact built over it ... How cool is that? No wonder there were a hundred or so responses to the post about the "hotel that wasn't there" ... |
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