Me: I live in Silicon Valley with my wife, child and cat. I have worked at Microsoft since I graduated from College, both in the Macintosh Business Unit on products such as Outlook Express, Entourage, IE, and Virtual PC and in Windows Live on Hotmail, Calendar and People. I am currently a Principal Lead Program Manager on the Windows Live Social Networking team. I basically manage a team of Program Managers responsible for delivering features to support our web and client applications. I've been blogging since 2001 and like to play around with .NET in my spare time working on projects such as dasBlog (the blog that powers this site) and Send to SmugMug (an application for uploading photos to SmugMug). I blog about a number of technology and productivity related topics.
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© Copyright 2010, Omar Shahine
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Well, it's done. The one remaining feature that I used offline mapping software to do now exists in Google Maps. They have the ability to change the suggested route using drag and drop. I've been awaiting this feature for a long time because often the suggested route by online mappings problems falls short for one reason or another.
Jeff Atwood explains why offline mapping software can't compete with the web.
There's no reason Streets and Trips couldn't adopt the same conventions as Google Maps. But Streets and Trips seems to be completely stuck in the old world mentality of toolbars, menus, and right-clicking. All the innovation in user interface seems to be taking place on the web, and desktop applications just aren't keeping up. Web applications are evolving online at a frenetic pace, while most desktop applications are mired in circa-1999 desktop user interface conventions, plopping out yearly releases with barely noticeable new features. This should be an unfair comparison. Streets and Trips is free to harness the complete power of the desktop PC, whereas Google Maps is limited to web browser scripting and HTTP calls to the server. Google Maps turns all those browser-based application weaknesses into strengths, by offering a bunch of online-enabled features that Streets and Trips doesn't: satellite view, real-time traffic data, and the new street view. Plus it's always up to date; we're guaranteed to be using the latest version with the newest features. And unlike Streets and Trips, it's free-- or at least ad-subsidized.
There's no reason Streets and Trips couldn't adopt the same conventions as Google Maps. But Streets and Trips seems to be completely stuck in the old world mentality of toolbars, menus, and right-clicking. All the innovation in user interface seems to be taking place on the web, and desktop applications just aren't keeping up. Web applications are evolving online at a frenetic pace, while most desktop applications are mired in circa-1999 desktop user interface conventions, plopping out yearly releases with barely noticeable new features.
This should be an unfair comparison. Streets and Trips is free to harness the complete power of the desktop PC, whereas Google Maps is limited to web browser scripting and HTTP calls to the server. Google Maps turns all those browser-based application weaknesses into strengths, by offering a bunch of online-enabled features that Streets and Trips doesn't: satellite view, real-time traffic data, and the new street view. Plus it's always up to date; we're guaranteed to be using the latest version with the newest features. And unlike Streets and Trips, it's free-- or at least ad-subsidized.
The web has won for mapping.
For my offline mapping needs I now use my Samsung Blackjack with Live Maps and my light, small, and sweet Bluetooth GlobalSat BT-359 GPS receiver.