Over the past year there have been some significant changes concerning online maps. Some are totally new or significantly updated, others are totally old and some keep their maps as-is for the time being.

Totally Old: MapBlast

MapBlast, a.k.a. MSN Maps & Directions, is a fossil in the online mapping world. It looks like something straight out of 1997, has no anti-aliased fonts, the map is offered in three sizes and you cannot click-and-drag the map at all.

And yes, that is a “Microsoft Streets & Trips 2006″ ad you see in the lower right corner. This thing is positively ancient.

Microsoft, seriously, you need to dump this. Now.

Totally New but better the way it was before: Bing Maps

Bing Maps is actually quite good. It loads very quickly, the feature set is decent as long as you can get used to the icons at the bottom left (they would be better as text links or icons on the map itself at top right), the map itself is up-to-date and modern, but there’s one problem.

The maps looked much better the way they were before.

If you use the Windows Live Writer software, you can still see how the map used to look using the Insert Map feature:

Same map from the same company – except this one is much better. Why? Colors and fonts. The new Bing Maps uses a muted color scheme that makes everything look “washed” out no matter how tightly you zoom in, and the font used now is thinner and more difficult to read.

If there were a way to switch back to the old look using the Bing Maps web site, I’d do it in a second and not think twice about it.

Staying the course: Yahoo! Maps

Y! Maps hasn’t changed that much in the past few years. Out of all the online mapping services, Y! easily wins the easiest-to-read and easiest-to-understand awards. The color scheme used is spot-on perfect and you can easily see the differences between interstates, highways and major roadways – including actually showing the word “Toll” for toll roads.

Y! Maps also has a few other things that are very convenient: Big airport icons (seen in the map above), easily visible county names when zooming in and very fast click-and-drag ability.

Where Y! falls short however is with GPS. There is no option I could find to send locations to your GPS device of choice. This is sorta/kinda made up for by the ability to send locations to Delicious or Y! Bookmarks (handy for smartphone users), but the ability to send to GPS would be a welcome addition.

Incrementally getting better: Google Maps

There are a lot of things Google gets right when it comes to maps, with the first being you can type basically anything in the search field and Goog will probably find it. Punch in a town/state, or ZIP, or coordinates, or county, or major attraction, etc. and Goog will find it.

As far as the overall look goes, the font is thick and readable, but the color scheme needs a major overhaul. All major roads on Google Maps are the same color (orange-tangerine..ish?), be it an interstate, county route or highway. Yes, you do see the shield labels, but compared to Y! or Bing it all looks the same.

My favorite feature of Google Maps is the one nobody ever mentions: The ability to zoom out using a double-right-click. None of the other guys do this. If you try, you’ll be treated to a menu but no zoom-out where you’re forced to use the slider menu on the left with your mouse pointer.

Also totally new: New MapQuest

This is a huge, huge improvement over the old MapQuest. It has big easy-read fonts, the green toolbar icons above the map make it stupidly easy to find common places such as airports, and dare I say it has the best “Hybrid” view. When you click the “Satellite” button at top right of the map, the road overlay over the sat images is by far the easiest on the eyes. Normally it’s the situation where a sat-overview with road overlay looks like a jumbled mess, but MapQuest found a way to make it work where it not only looks good but is more informative at the same time.

My favorite part however is this:

This may not look like much, but oh how convenient it is. Map anything out and you see “Link”. It’s already shortened, easily copied and ready to be sent in email, IM or social network. No need to have an account, meaning you don’t have to be logged in to use it. NICE.

The map site you probably never heard of: Ovi Maps

Ovi Maps is a bit underwhelming in that it’s fairly basic, but has one huge thing going for it:

Change the colors? Really? Yes! With the installation of a plugin, “Night Mode” changes the color scheme to make the map more easily readable.

I do know for a fact there are a ton of people out there who prefer dark color schemes. It’s not so much for readability, it’s because it’s easier on the eyes.

Ovi’s major drawback is that it needs a plugin to be fully featured. You can’t even map a route using the “Routing” button without that plugin. Not cool.

For the map geek who thinks they can program a better map: OpenStreetmap

To note up front: You can’t route with OpenStreetMap, meaning there is no driving directions ability. Be that as it may, OSM is still cool in the respect it’s the ultimate map geek’s online toy. It can accept things like GPX files (see “GPS Traces” button for examples), the “Diaries” function allows for a little mini mapping blog of sorts, and the best part is that you can edit the map. See something wrong or out-of-date? Fix it yourself. How do you fix it? Use the “Export” function, grab the XML/Mapnik/Osmarender data and off you go. Very geeky stuff, obviously, but when editing map data there’s really no way to make it non-geeky.

Rich’s personal picks?

I bounce around when it comes to online maps, but in order I usually use Yahoo! Maps first (has the best visuals to my eye), followed by Google Maps and then Bing Maps. Bing used to be #2 until they went with that muted color scheme and changed around the format where counties barely show up now. In the State of Florida where I live, knowing where you are on a county level is a big deal.

Even though I use GPS a lot, I still use online map web sites to double-check locations for fine tuning, because after all, the online versions are more up-to-date than the GPS is.

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