Now things have changed and now we can accurately find our exact location, find us on the map, find the shortest route, fastest route, nearest places, traffic statics, tourist places and everything. Google Maps is one of the best-known applications for finding the driving direction and finding the traffic condition. Google Maps available as an online website and as an app. You can install an app on your device and can use your device feature to find the location. Most people don’t know there are other map applications exist having more features than Google Maps. This story is all about various map application that you can use for your next exploration.

1. Bing Map

(https://www.bing.com/maps)

Did you heard of mapblast.com, a map solution acquired by Microsoft in 2002 and added it to MSN maps as Microsoft map point. Using Bing map one can browse and search topographically-shaded street maps for many cities worldwide. Road view feature is the default map view and displays vector imagery of roads, buildings, and geography. Aerial view provides satellite imagery onto the map and highlights roads and major landmarks for easy identification amongst the satellite images. Bird’s-eye view shows aerial imagery captured from low-flying aircraft. A 360-degree imagery of street-level scenes taken from special cameras mounted on moving vehicles are available at Streetside. Venue maps provides a way of seeing the layout of the venue. The 3D maps feature allows users to see the environment like buildings in 3D with rotate and tilt the angle in addition to panning and zooming. Inaddition to this like other maps, users can get directions between two or more locations. Bing Maps shows users current traffic information for major highways and roads. The feature uses four colour codes (black, red, yellow, green) to indicate traffic volume, from heaviest traffic to lightest traffic. Like other map service Bing Maps allows users to share maps and embed maps into users websites. The search box at the top of Bing Maps can be used to locate places, businesses and landmarks, and people. Search results contains addresses, contact information, and reviews for businesses and landmarks.2. MapQuest

(https://www.mapquest.com/)

Mapquest is a mapping service owned by AOL. MapQuest gives street-level detail map and driving directions for a variety of countries. You can check if your country is available via a pull-down menu on the MapQuest home page.

3. OpenStreetMap

(https://www.openstreetmap.org/)

OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a collaborative project to create a free editable map of the world.Created by Steve Coast in the UK in 2004 inspired by the success of Wikipedia. Map data is collected by volunteers using ground surveys with using tools such as a handheld GPS unit, a notebook, digital camera, or a voice recorder.

4. Waze

(https://www.waze.com/)

As per Waze, it is the world’s largest community-based traffic and navigation app. You can join other drivers in your area who share real-time traffic and road info.

5. Yandex Maps

(https://yandex.com/maps/)

Yandex provides detailed maps of cities in Europe and the world with street names, building numbers, and businesses. Satellite images, street panoramas, and building photos are also available. You can create maps online easily with the Yandex Map Constructor without the need for any programming skills.

6. Wikimapia Map

(http://wikimapia.org/)

Wikimapia is an online editable map.The data in Wikimapia is derived from voluntary crowdsourcing. All users, registered or unregistered or guest users are allowed to add a place on the Wikimapia layer.

7.Tomtom Map

(https://www.tomtommaps.com/en_us/)

TomTom NV is a Dutch company that produces traffic, navigation and mapping products.From mobile and web applications to smart cities, transportation, and internet of things, they provide Maps and Traffic products and Online APIs  for location-aware technologies.

For this, visit the Google Map and sign in to your Google account. Now on the left pane, you can see ‘Get directions’.  Type your starting location in the first box (labeled A) and type your next or final destination in the second box (labeled B). You can hit the enter key after entering the final destination or can click ‘Get Directions’ button. It will generate the driving direction on the map. If multiple routes are available you can select the route you want from the left pane. You can also drag the route line by dragging the circle appearing on that route. You can remove a destination from your directions. To remove click [X] beside the destination in the left panel. To save the map, scroll down to the bottom of the left pane there you can find ‘Save to My Maps’. You can add a new map by selecting the ‘Create a New map’ (A drop-down menu will appear which will allow you to save the route to an existing custom map, or create a new one). Name your map and save it. The driving directions thus saved are in your ‘My Maps’ profile. You can see the saved map by visiting the ‘My Maps’. You can also ‘Edit’ the title and description of the saved map. To share the map, click the share button seen on the right side of the map. It will ask to mention the map is ‘Public’ or ‘Private’. If you changed it to ‘Public’ the link to the map will be displayed and you can share the link to anyone.

Calculate fuel cost for your road trip

Google Maps can provide the estimated fuel cost for your journey. Fuel costs for your journey are displayed just under the driving directions. Clicking on the price opens up options to specify vehicle and fuel type, as well as change the fuel price. You can calculate the approximate fuel price based on the selected route.

Which method you are using to fix your driving directions and which method you are using to calculate fuel cost? Which mapping tool you are using Google Map or Bing Map or Any other?

To take a screenshot of a map (thinking you don’t have any screenshot capture tool), enter a destination or point of interest to find the location, adjust the map using the zoom button or using your mouse. If everything ok, align the map on your screen and press ‘Print Screen’ button on your keyboard. Now the full image on the screen is captured as a screenshot. Now open an image editing program such as Microsoft Paint or Paint.net. Create a new document in the program and paste the image (Ctrl+V) on the program. Find the crop tool to crop the image and save the map as any one of the popular image formats like jpg or png.

The best way is to use the ‘Snipping tool’ or any other screenshot tool to capture the map. If you are using the Snipping tool, you can use the pen and highlighter tool to mark the road, driving direction and places to visit using different color pens. You can highlight tourist spots. You can plan the driving directions and finally, you can save it as a popular image file like jpg or png. Another way is, if you are using Chrome or Firefox browser, use extensions like ‘Awesome screenshot’ to get the screenshot of the webpage. You can save the screenshot and can open it later to edit it in image editing programs. You can add driving direction to it by opening it in Paint.

To take the screenshot you can use Greenshot, it is a light-weight screenshot software tool for Windows. You can use Jing to create images and videos of what you see on your computer screen. Another tool is Skitch from Evernote. Which is your favorite tool? Which method are you using to mark and take a screenshot of your driving directions and route map?

To produce these photo tours, Google used advanced computer vision techniques to create a 3D experience from public, user-contributed Picasa and Panaromio photos. Google started by finding clusters of overlapping photos around major landmarks. From the photos, the system derives the 3D shape of each landmark and computes the location and orientation of each photo. Google Maps then selects a path through the best images, and adds 3D transitions to seamlessly guide you from photo to photo as if you’re literally flying around the landmark and viewing it from different perspectives.

Here is a YouTube video describing the feature. Did you liked the Photo Tours? Can you suggest some alternative methods to do it?

3D Tourist map

Onion Map introduced a great collection of interactive 3D maps of some of the most world’s popular cities.You can zoom and move around the place just like the Google Maps but this is more clean and interesting. Foreign tourists will also find these maps very useful since all the major city attractions, hotels & restaurants, shopping joints, etc. are very neatly and clearly marked.   

Heatmaps

Ahti Heinla has created an interesting heat map on Google Maps that shows how popular different parts of the world are among tourists. The underlying data for the heat map is sourced entirely from Panoramio. The color yellow on the world map indicates high density of tourists (most of Europe), red indicates medium activity (see Japan) while blue means that destination is less popular with tourists. Places that had no Panoramio photos, and therefore nil tourist activity, are in grey color.

Have you ever heard of the Google service Panoramio. If not, Panoramio is a Google service where anyone can upload photos of places where they visited. It can easily measure the popularity of different regions  of the world using the popularity in Panoramio (see the above picture). The idea is simple, the higher the picture count from a region, the more popular that place should be among tourists. Using that simple logic, Ahti Heinla has created a nice heat map on Google Maps, showing popular parts of the world among tourists,and the underlying data for the heat map is sourced entirely from the Panoramio.