I have always had a dream to drive Rte. 66. I think it's because I've heard the Chuck Berry song way too many times. To me, Rte 66 always seemed like that little piece of old-fashioned Americana that has been dying out with the invention of bigger and better things (i.e. I-40). I used google maps to create a map that pinpoints all the major cities that Rte. 66 goes through.
View Maureen's Route 66 Trip in a larger map
I marked some general feelings I have when hearing the city names and my sort of plans for each major city. Since I haven't been to many of the cities, I would have to do research to figure out exactly what I want to do (I'm a sucker for tourist traps like "The World's Largest Ball of Twine").
One thing that I really liked about marking my trip down in google maps is the ability to turn on photos, videos, webcams, and wikipedia articles for my map. So simply by clicking "More" at the top of the map, I can choose these things. This is nice to get a sense of what people felt was worth a photo. Plus, after my trip, I would be able to add in my own Rte. 66 trip photos.
I have never played with this part of google maps before, so this was very interesting to me. I have a Garmin gps device that I never leave home without, but it only gives bland directions and shows roads. If google maps could combine with my gps, I could have photos of what I am looking for, satellite pictures, wikipedia pages that might recommend some of my tourist traps. This would be a far cry from the vacations I took with my family as a kid, where we had a paper map that could never get folded the same way again. I think that this newer technology would make it very difficult to get lost or to remain lost for too long. This is where I see cell phones taking over the gps market since it doesn't make sense to have a bland gps unit when a cell phone can do all that and more!
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Sweet! After reading this I started playing around with the navigation maps on my Droid since it uses google maps. I was trying to see if it could do what you talked about. Wow it does way more than I thought it could. I plugged in directions from our house to my parents in Ohio...you can have it show people who are using Buzz along the way...where wikipedia entries are along the way, satelite view, and under the "lab" features are some more you can try but aren't quite ready to be a full feature...like terrain, more detailed traffic, measure distances, and popular locations...this app updates about once a week too which is awesome since with a gps you have to pay to update it etc.
ReplyDeleteThis is a great use of the web 2.0 tools. I think that the geo-tagging features that are available on the current smartphone cameras will help items like this continue to grow. For a little while when I first got my iPhone, I would take photos of those historical road makers and post them to flickr. I never finished the project, mostly because I couldn't get buy in from my wife when I kept trying to stop the car on trips, but i photographed and geotagged about 15 of them in the WNC area.
ReplyDeleteI need to start doing that with my iPhone as well Neil (although I similarily have a husband that insists I don't need pictures of these things). Finding out about geotagging really makes me want to get out on the road.
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