Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with maps and directions

Help me help my boss not get lost.

chiababe — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 17:50:48 -0800

My boss wants me to research GPS units for him to use since he'll be traveling a lot more in the near future. Any recommendations? I really don't know what I should be looking for in a good GPS unit. He wants to spend less than $200. It also needs to be fairly simple to use and update. He's an awesome boss, but not so good with tricky technology. Most of his travel will be within North and South Carolina. We're looking to purchase this within the week, so I won't be able to wait for new models that might be around the corner. I've read a few of the previous questions on this, but I'm wondering if there's anything new and exciting I should be looking at.

How do I include a link to driving directions in an embedded Google Map?

designbot — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 14:55:08 -0800

What is the best way to embed a Google Map of a business's location, including a link to driving directions? This is for a small business's website. All I want is a small embedded map of the business's location, with a standard pop-up flag including links for driving directions, the address, etc. (Basically like what you see here, but without the extra search results on the left-hand side.

If there's a better input method for requesting driving directions, that would be fine too.

I would think that providing a map & driving directions to a specific business would be one of the most common uses of the Google Maps API, but I don't see any examples of what I'm looking for. Surely, there must be a simple, standard way to provide driving directions on your website… Right?

Multi-Stop Driving Directions & Optimized Routing

masymas — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 23:15:43 -0800

Mapping & multi-stop driving directions: is there a free online mapping tool that will allow me to enter several locations in a US city and then display the quickest driving route to pass through all those locations? I've seen one called NavPro but it's not free.

How

parma — Sat, 19 Feb 2005 10:45:21 -0800

Have you ever come across a site that gives you driving directions, like yahoo maps or mapquest, but lets you fiddle a bit with which roads to take/not to take? I want to be able to avoid traffic jams, or find directions that make the least possible turns and change of roads. (Like when I don't want to risk getting lost and ending up in a bad area of town after dark.)

Question regarding hemispheres, direction and maps.

Seth — Wed, 25 Aug 2004 10:40:18 -0800

Question regarding hemispheres, direction and maps. Ok. So if I travel far enough East, eventually, I am heading West because of geography terms, right? But in the abstract, I would still be heading east in the sense of right of North. So this confuses me. I am guessing the distinction exists for a geographical reason. But I am not sure why analytically hemispheres are necessary.

If I have a compass in my hand and keep walking East, at any point does the compass rotate where I think I would be walking West?

So, the North Pole is at 90 degrees north, but which side is 100 degrees? I was told that you only think of North of the equator in terms of 90 degrees. But, you think of East/West of the equator in terms of 180 degrees from the prime merdian. What gives? Why the difference? It is still half a globe.

Does it make any sense to say that NY is east of LA and that LA is east of NY? Does it make any sense to say that Canada is south of Mexico?

Is there a simple explanation that explains all this confusion?