Finding your granny's house
The pros and cons of Google Maps, Google Earth and Yahoo! Maps
European plans to rival the American Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) have encountered further funding problems, on the realisation that their version, Galileo may not make any money. It seems that the GPS system is the one we will use for the foreseeable future. The global market for satellite navigation services is projected to expand to three billion users as the technology is integrated in more mobile devices. Some of the main mapping services are run by Google and AOL.
Google Maps
The best thing about Google Maps is that it gives the impression that you have direct control of satellites hovering in space. In fact, this website and its cousin Google Earth use a mix of satellite images, aerial photography and a computer system called GIS 3D Globe to render a realistic picture of the world from above. Most of the images are a year old, some are older.
Only the big cities in Ireland are shown in detail. In the countryside, you will frequently come across a blank screen when using the satellite feature, which can be irritating as this is mostly used to try to find your house. And your granny's house. And your old house. If just using the street map function, Google Maps is excellent. It is almost up-to-date on the new estates around the country, even if some of them are called “no name 52”.
Scrolling is often the most important feature for a mapping site. A bad scrolling function can make moving around a map a frustrating experience.
Google went for a fairly standard zoom bar with direction arrows above. Unimaginative but functional. The address finder is a bit of a joke: our diaspora has named their new towns in America and Australia the same as their old towns in Ireland, up to seven times in the case of Ennis.
www.maps.google.com, earth.google.com
Yahoo! Maps
This site starts off positively with an easily-navigated globe map and a nifty pointer that centres the map on wherever you click, meaning you do not have to fiddle with side arrows to get your destination into the middle of the screen, like with Google Maps. Another plus are the markers on the zooming bar which show you where to click to if you want to see countries, states, cities or streets. This takes away a lot of the time-wasting and guesswork involved in finding the appropriate height. In the countryside, shading shows land surface features and colouring shows major environmental zones.
But this is where the positives end. The navigation is done solely through the use of a box in the corner that works badly over cities. The street or business search does not seem to function in Ireland whatsoever. The site becomes unresponsive if you try to stretch it. Its satellite pictures are obscured by cloud, which is realistic but unnecessary. Overall, the Yahoo site fails to impress.