Thursday, February 08, 2007

Sponsored Blue Ball Map Hate

I am officially requiring Mapquest dot com to re-register as MapWhore dot totally useless. I hate it.

What's so hard about generating directions from one address to another - or what it calls STARTING LOCATION and ENDING LOCATION? I work in an office building surrounded by other office buildings. We have an actual address here. It's not like I'm asking it to go from Billy Joe's cow to the diner in the center of town. Don't send me hate mail, my family grew up on a farm. Yet, every time I go to put in our office address so that I can get an attorney from here to wherever he's going, I get to play pick a start and end point that has nothing to do with the addresses I just told it I care about. Complete with Zip flipping codes.

The destination screen fades out but remains playfully visible. "OOoo, you want something from me and you aren't going to get it until you pick one of our sponsored "starting locations." It's like playing peek-a-boo with a Thomas Guide. If I make the right face it might loosen up and give me the f ing information I need.

So after you pick a totally irrelevant hyperlinked address, the next screen fades out the STARTING LOCATION and forces you to pick a sponsored link for your ending location.

Did Mapquest hire my Mom as their U/I developer? Because every time I tell her something she tries to make me revise my statement so it fits in her world too.

F that.

Mapquest is a teasing whore. I like Yahoo maps. It totally puts out on the addresses I give it the first time.

7 comments:

Barry said...

Those irratating map programs...

what ever happened to searches that had meaningful results instead of 'buy how to get to 1325 State Street at Amazon-dot-com'

The Idiot said...

"Google Maps is the BOMB!"

"True Dat'!

"DOUBLE TRUE!"

Aisha T. said...

Hehehe...yes, mapquest and then their "take a slight right" here or a "merge left there" ends up getting me turned around. Just, tell me where to take my squared off rights and lefts and I'll be fine!

BostonPobble said...

My favorite mapquest direction was always "take Left onto Unnamed Road" Well....that's helpful.

True Dat, Idiot! Google maps!

AndyT13 said...

BOy I couldn't agree more. I use google too but yahoo works. Mapquest sucks. Try following the directions sometime. They have the same info as everyone else but they're the only ones who consistently give wrong directions. I think the idea was to make you pay for the premium directions (you know, the ones that WORK). What a cluster. Anyway happy to read your rant. PLease continue. Love ya!

Spin_Doc1 said...

I think I am the only one that doen't like google maps, but I don't have a helpful alternative either.

Spider Girl said...

It's funny, just today I was reading about a little Amish town called Blue Ball and was considering looking it up on a map-thingy...so your post caught my eye. :)