You've just spent weeks begging, borrowing, cheating, and stealing to assemble a collection of bathing suits, cheeseballs, sunscreen bottles, backpacks, Frisbees, and beverages. Add some games, friends, a car, and a destination, and you're money. But now, it's almost spring break, and there's still a missing piece: a driving plan. You need to find directions, a map, and places to stay - and the Internet is the place to look.
Thanks to the Feb. 8 launch of Google Maps, students' options for finding driving directions online just got a lot better. This latest addition to the slew of Google features has many convenient aspects, including draggable maps, a search function integrated with Google Local that allows users to easily get directions to or information about local hotels, gyms, pizza places, liquor stores, and more on the maps. There are also turn-by-turn directions and keyboard shortcuts that enable users to pan around the maps.
Despite Google's new addition, Mapquest, which is owned by AOL/TIME Warner, remains the most popular map service on the Web today, receiving over 37 million visitors every month. It sets the standard with step-by-step driving directions, real-time traffic reports, local business information, memory features on the maps, a cell phone version, and a feature for linking its maps to Web sites.
Both services offer easy ways to search for local businesses, maps, driving directions, travel times, and mileages. Google has no advertisements, but Mapquest is international, whereas Google only includes the U.S. and parts of Canada. Both services get their data from the same sources - Navteq Corp. and Tele Atlas N.V. - so the difference arises out of the way each one analyzes and presents the data.
The Daily conducted a quick test of Google and Mapquest services in getting from Tufts' Medford campus to Logan Airport and found that although Mapquest directions were easier to follow, the Google directions provided a slightly faster route.
Not surprisingly, a growing number of students on campus are switching to Google Maps due to curiosity, practicality and desire to support Google's innovation rather than AOL/TIME Warner's conglomeration.
"It's easy! For Google, you don't have to know as much," junior Jean Duff Whitehead said. "You could just put Anna's [Taqueria] and 02144, and know how to get there. Plus, it is prettier, simpler, and easier to use - intuitive."
Junior Loren Brichter, who found out about Google Maps from the techie news website slashdot.org and has been telling friends about it, concurred.
"Google is better because it's got live feed, advanced Javascript capabilities, and innovative use of cascading style sheets [CSS]," he said. "That makes it a lot more user-friendly. True, Google is still beta, so there could still be glitches, but you can't blame them. It's brand-new."
And it's already evolving. When it was initially launched, Google Maps could only function through browsers based on either Internet Explorer or Mozilla, meaning that individuals with Macs rather than PCs could not easily access the service. Yesterday, though, Google Maps product manager Bret Tayler announced that Apple's web browser, Safari, as well as browsers made by Opera Software, can now access Google Maps.
"Anyway, if you look at their products, you can tell that Google's philosophy is to do one thing and do it well," Brichter continued. "Mapquest is part of a huga-blug conglomeration."
Today, the jury's still out. Both services offer aspects that appeal to students, and at this point, usership may be determined more by comfort with the proven record of Mapquest than by fascination with the unproven but innovative Google Maps.
Despite the growing, fervent movement in support of Google, many students don't use its mapping service because they are unaware that it exists. Senior Chris Erwin is planning a spring break trip down the eastern seaboard that includes stops in New Jersey, Washington, D.C., South Carolina, and Georgia. He is cautious about using Google for directions.
"I will still use Mapquest, because I'm familiar with it," Erwin said. "Google makes a pretty good map; I'll give them that. But Mapquest has nice features like remembering addresses, which makes for efficient searches."
Others have tested the two services and are disenchanted with Google's performance.
"I used them both - so far, Google is one for two, but Mapquest is one for one," sophomore John Chappell said. "When I used Google, they mislabeled a road. But I didn't get lost, and it was more of a back road in the boonies of New Hampshire."
In the future, Chappell indicated that he will continue to use Mapquest. "I will probably print out [directions from both], just to make sure," he said. "But really, I would be looking at the Mapquest [directions] - their visuals are sick!"
Those visuals Chappell refers to? Small icons with highway numbers and signs that Mapquest inserts next to the driving directions to emphasize the activities called for in the text.
