For the most part, the way people type out directions using a mapping service like Google Maps or Bing Maps is exact-address-to-exact-address. Well, you don’t have to do that. If you know your ZIPs, you can get the directions info you want faster and easier. 1. Abbreviate, skip the Town/State and use the ZIP This is a good one to know because there are...

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: MapBlastMapBlast, a.k.a. MSN Maps & Directions, is a fossil in the online mapping world. It looks like something straight out of 1997, has...

As the economy slowly but surely begins to bounce back in the US, many people have put their plans of moving to another state back on the table. You may be one of them. Something which is of great value in planning for a move (or even thinking about it) is getting the answer to three questions:What’s the average price of homes in X area? How many people...

In Mozilla Firefox, Opera and Google Chrome you can use keywords to activate any web site that supports custom input (like google.com for example). Mapping sites are easy to set up for keyword shortcut searches as long as you know how to configure them. The way to use the keyword search once configured is to go to your address bar, type the word MAP followed by...

It’s known that I don’t necessarily agree with the way Google does things at times, particularly in the realm of consumer privacy. But this doesn’t mean I don’t use Google products, because there are certain services they have that definitely do get it right the first time. Google Maps This is the best mapping product on the internet due...

In certain instances it’s better to have the exact coordinates of a location on the map because some addresses are listed incorrectly whether you using Google Maps or Bing Maps. This is especially true in rural or highly dense city areas where addresses don’t exactly point to their correct locations. Using direct coordinate data however, the...

Over the course of the weekend I used the internet to find places most of you out there are aware of to get good stuff cheap. Most of you will know what these places/events are, but it’s how you find them that’s the important part. Using Google Maps, with the category operator you can quickly find what you’re looking for in or near your local...

I’ve mentioned this before but it bears mentioning again: Google Street Views freaks a lot of people out.  And I mean a lot of people. This time it’s stirred up privacy concerns in Baltimore where some are getting a bit perturbed at the fact that no matter how much effort you put into your personal privacy on the internet, your house is still...

A really cool thing (for lack of better words) I ran across is something called MappedUp. MappedUp is an application that tracks a large number of RSS news sources and displays their latest items on a world map. You can download MappedUp as a screensaver or active desktop. You can also download MappedUp for your blog or website. If you take a look at their...

Something which is not readily obvious in Google Maps is the ability to find real estate listings. And no, it’s not just for new houses. It also includes rentals, foreclosures (good for the bargain hunter) and so on. Here’s how to do it: Load up Google Maps and click “My Maps” to the left. Looks like this:Note the “My Maps”...

The little orange guy in Google Maps as most people know is the character you see in the Street Views function. The recent update to the Google Maps service definitely puts greater emphasis on this. For example: The Street Views icon (i.e. the orange guy) is now directly on top of the zoom slider…   …and yes it’s functional. While...

My favorite mapping product on the internet is Google Maps. I use if often and said honestly, nobody else comes close in speed and ease of use. Live Maps comes close but still doesn’t cut the mustard, so to speak. Yahoo! Maps puts very annoying animated advertisements in their mapping product and MapQuest is simply old and clunky to use – not to...

(click above image to see full size) Just for kicks recently I checked out Microsoft Live Maps with Virtual Earth 3D (Beta) installed. Summed up: It kicks ass. No, it does not have all the features of Google Maps/Earth (such as Street Views,) however it looks far better, particularly with “Bird’s eye” option enabled. I was amazed at how good...

There is a way to directly send a Google Maps location to just about any mobile Garmin GPS device (StreetPilot, nuvi, zumo, etc.) Step 1. If you haven’t done so, install the latest Garmin USB drivers. Install the Garmin Communicator Plugin (this is so your web browser can “talk” to Google Maps correctly). Remember to restart your web browser...