Monday 1 January 2007

Siteseeing 3

Map My India

This site has improved considerably since I first saw it, but it still needs a halfway competent sub-editor to correct the dodgy grammar, and the interface needs a heckuva lot of work before it can compare with the ease of use of a Mapquest or the maps utilities from Google and Yahoo. But it scores for us in this country because of its India focus. It can help you find places down to the street level in the major metros, and can even help you locate villages. It seems to be work in progress, though: except for Delhi, no other place lets you view maps at the top zoom level; most stop a couple of notches lower down. But there are a few useful features. Custom “e-locations” which let you mark a point on a map (you’ll need to sign up to do that) for which you can get a link which you can send to friends. And a Points of Interest search lets you find stuff in a variety of categories, including hotels, restaurants, tourist spots, banks and ATMs, hospitals, malls, embassies, and so on. I particularly liked Driving Directions: mark a start point and an end, and you get the route marked for you on a map. Overall, I’ll hold the verdict for now, but venture to say that it should, hopefully, turn into a very useful site given time. Provided, of course, that they work harder at the interface, or at least make just make it a wee bit less irritating...


(This column used to be called Cybertrack,.)

Published in Outlook Traveller, January 2007.

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