Entry 6: Maps, Compasses and protractors?

Ever felt lost? Like extremely lost? Never fear! The maps and compasses are here! WHAT?! ARE YOU FROM THE STONE AGE?!

Just a decade ago, maps, protractors and compasses were used extensively to guide us through places and travels. But now, with the introduction of Google Maps, you can literally just click your way to you desired destination! Here’s an introduction of the amazing Google maps! Something that I used extremely often as well!

So what is Google maps all about? Here’s a detailed description of Google maps by our dear and reliable online encyclopaedia Wikipedia!

“Google Maps (formerly Google Local) is a web-mapping service application and technology provided by Google, free (for non-commercial use), that powers many map-based services, including the Google Maps website, Google Ride Finder, Google Transit, and maps embedded on third-party websites via the Google Maps API. It offers street maps, a route planner for traveling by foot, car, or public transport and an urban business locator for numerous countries around the world. Google Maps satellite images are not in real time; they are several months or years old.”

There you go! A simple yet detailed description of Google maps all in one paragraph. And that’s the end of this entry! Hahaha… I’m just kidding. Here’s my personal experience with what I consider a godsend of an Internet tool.

I run a lot. But in order to do some proper running with a sense of direction and how far I ran, I needed something useful and user-friendly that could aid in my quest to find the perfect running rout around my area. So that was when I turned to Google maps! With Google maps I could map out all sorts of running routes and according to my different preference in distance and elevation in roads (well the elevation in roads were up to my own personal knowledge of the area, but they will probably implement that feature within Google maps soon, I hope!) here’s a few visual aids to show you the amazing Google maps and the easiness to plan out a route! So here’s an example of how I choose my own route, and this is real! It wasn’t done just for this blog; I actually do use this route!!

First go to Google maps itself. Here’s the link : http://maps.google.com/

Now type in the address of you choice as shown in the red circle above. Naturally mine would be Toa Payoh since I live there.

In the red circle, you can type in a specific location for you starting and endpoint of running route. For me, since I just want to run a huge circle around Toa Payoh, I’ll just type in the same address for both “A” and “B”.

So as you can see, I typed in the same address and this is what you get, shown by the black arrows. The blue line between the two green pointers is your route that you can click to hold and drag around.

So this is what happens after you play around with dragging the route; as shown in the red circle!

Viola! I have created the running route of my choice! A mini circle around half the estate of Toa Payoh! How do I know how long this distance is? Simple! They show you the distance as well as indicated by the red circle!

EASY RIGHT? Now go create your own routes, or just play around and have fun with Google maps! Google should pay me for this promotion that I’m doing for them.