The Map Room

Good — in Internet Explorer. In Mozilla Firefox, the maps don’t show up; though directions do.

Mapquest also doesn’t show up in Firefox, and I suspect Google is more likely to make the needed changes.

Blazing speed. How do they do that? There are inaccuracies in it that are the same as those in MapQuest. For its speed and reasonable accuracy it will be my default mapper. I would also highly recommend Maporama.com, a British outfit that does very well with the US.

Interesting, though, this representation of North America as a lone island in the middle of an (apparently) endless blue ocean… ;-)

Fast and intuitive interface, speed, great detail accuracy, nice printout… I wonder if they are thinking of expanding their coverage to other countries and continents. The ability to drag the “endless ocean” could mean that a future extension is projected.

Stunning.

The rendering of streets a wide lanes is gorgeous, feels more like a European map. The dynamic scrolling is amazing.

Mainly, I like the fact that it’s full screen! That alone makes it a much more useful service.

Works for me in Firefox. Looks like part of the speed they get from serving up the map in 128x128 pixel segments, and preloading a much larger area than what you’re looking at, so when you scroll, the blocks that scroll into view are usually already loaded. I have to wonder how much caching power they threw at the backend of this. Do they just have every block of the map cached at every resolution? That’s a lot of image data. Obviously it exists in vector format on the backend, but rendering it to bitmap on the fly is probably not worth it.

The reasons the innacuracies are the same is that the data providers are the same, NavTeq and Tele Atlas. Since IE is going extinct I wonder what the point is?

Fantastic site! I concur with previous comments about the look and feel of the site. I also loved the function of locating specific attractions (e.g., restaurants) nearby a specific address.

One slight drawback to me was that it does not seem to be as intuitive in some respects. Specifically, when I asked for directions or a map for a street without providing a specific number for that street, I was told that the location could not be found. But this may not be limited to Google.

I am using in Firefox and yahoo.com. Picked two locations- a rural area in Oklahoma(Caddo, Ok, Folsum Rd) and Highway 75 in Dallas, Texas. Parts of paved roads missing in Caddo although speed is very impressive. Parts of the Dallas highway system are under construction and detail is about 3 years behind date. Still, it may only update evey few years. Thanks for the tip. I will use. -hnm

I’m using Firefox and it works great.

More on Google Maps from Rafe Colburn and Aaron Swartz.

It’s a beautiful thing.

Dan Goodman: I suggest getting a fresh copy of your prefs.js file for Firefox, perhaps by making a fresh install elsewhere. I once couldn’t see the Google Maps either, or the rating stars on Netflix. (I have never had a problem with MapQuest.) Once I did this, Google Maps and Netflix worked perfectly. After, you can try setting your old settings with about:config until you find the line that broke things.

I’m a little late on this one but I decided to post anyway. GoogleMaps seems to have a really extensive database of points of interest for each city; among things like “cafes”, “movie theaters”, “car rentals”, “restaurants”, and even “stores” all yield results. Surprisingly, searching for “libraries” in Ann Arbor, MI leads to some strange results. It shows all the libraries except the four main libraries of the University of Michigan. Something Google might want to fix for the future…

Anyway, an awesome addition to the already great Google collection, and a great contribution to online map servicing.

No Maxthon support = BAD, since Maxthon is nothing more than a shell.