Have you ever been doing something on a computer that seemed overly repetitive and time-consuming? (Hopefully this isn’t your everyday job.) The kind of thing that makes you stop for a second and think, "hey, this is a computer. There’s got to be an easier way to do this."
And then you experience a magic moment – serendipitous, perhaps – when you actually discover the easier way to do things. One of the first times I remember this was finding out about the CONCATENATE function in Excel. Another was discovering the batch function in Photoshop.
Now I’ve had my Web 2.0 version of the enlightening moment. I’ve visited New York a lot over the years and the fact that street numbers aren’t synchronized in a grid of a city just doesn’t make sense. Boston isn’t much better, even if it wasn’t built on cow paths. So whenever I visit New York, I map stuff out on Google but haven’t found a way to see where more than two waypoints are located at the same time. I’d map out a couple of points at a time and print out the directions – until today.
I discovered wayfaring.
The site allows you to create custom maps with multiple destination points, overlaid on Google Maps. Perfect. It’s been around since November 2005 and I wish they’d get some VC funding to launch a big marketing effort (and save some $$$ to develop additional functionality). The site still has some technical glitches, but overall it has a great interface and the functionality is fantastic. Tons of potential uses – house hunting, sales calls, meals on wheels. And on and on.
Let’s hope this company is one that survives long after the current bubble deflates – maybe Google can use their pile of cash to integrate this functionality into the Maps platform.
Tags:
wayfaring, maps ::
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