Finding Directions

March 28, 2004

On our way to Monterey we missed several important freeway exits and ended up not knowing if we were heading in the right direction. My mobile phone is web enabled and after 10 long minutes of wrestling with it I was able to pull up the directions to our destination from Mapquest. The problem is that Mapquest is not built to be seen on a small cell phone screen, there are tons of graphics and advertising that make the experience unbearably slow and cumbersome. There is even a link on the Mapquest homepage that reads "Mapquest mobile" but instead of directions, the link takes you to a 3rd party site: Vindigo Studios in which they try get you to download their Mapquest client, not much help if you are lost.

In any case, back at home I did a search on Google and found that Mapquest has some sort of an unofficial homepage for mobile devices that by looking at the copyright (1996-2001) does not receive much attention from the company. The unofficial homepage is just what the doctor ordered if you ever get lost and have a web enabled phone available because the page has only one graphic (the Mapquest logo in black and white), no advertising and no unnecessary features, just a few fields to enter a beginning address as well as a destination address.