Navigational Technology

Thank heaven for navigational technology. I am awful at directions, both giving and interpreting them. It doesn't matter if I am in a car, on foot, or riding the subway - when reading directions like head North toward... travel East on ... - I am immediately lost. After moving to NYC, I thought I would never get to new places on time, ever.

But using a combination of the iPhone Map application and Hopstop, I can find my way around New York City quickly and easily. Without these tools, especially Hopstop, I would be lost and helpless all the time. You laugh, but it's true -- do not underestimate the severity of my lack of direction.

1) The iPhone Map application, with myLocation integration, is awesome at finding particular places that are close to where I am. For example: If I need to find the closest Duane Reade pharmacy, I hit the myLocation button to show me approximately where I am, and then I search Duane Reade on my map and pins appear where all the Duane Reade's are that are close to me. I use this a lot when I am out and about running errands.

2) Hopstop is my savior. It gets me from point A to point B in the quickest, easiest, most efficient way possible, every time.  Hopstop was designed for city commuters who walk and take subways, buses and cabs to get to their destinations. If you live in or visit NYC, Long Island, Boston, Chicago, San Fransisco, New Jersey and/or Washington DC, you must check out Hopstop next time you need walking or subway directions. It's so easy to use and has seamless mobile integration. Its Simple: 1. Enter the addresss you are leaving from and the address of your destination, 2. choose whether you want to get there by walking, subway, bus or cab and 3. it will provide  you with detailed directions that you can email or text to yourself. With Hopstop, I never get frustrated when I have to go to a new place. I simply log on to the site and text myself the directions or use their mobile site to be guided step by step to my destination.

 

Comments

[steve Garfield]

The Apple iPhone Maps person hung up on the Starbucks girl. http://tinyurl.com/3ay83w Rude.

[Ontario Emperor]

I do have a sense of direction, but obviously you need to know where you are going. My phone doesn't have location capability, but I've still found that plain vanilla mobile Google Maps has drastically changed how I get from place to place. For the first 45 years of my life, I'd grab a AAA map, a book map (Thomas Brothers in the Los Angeles area, the old Alexandria Drafting Company in the Washington DC area), or (recently) a printout from Mapquest or Google or somewhere similar. Now that we can get maps and directions on our mobile phone, you don't have to lug maps around any more. After any business trip, I usually find that I've added a dozen contacts to Outlook which I used for mapping purposes.

Although I don't live in a Hopstop area (I am way deep in suburbia), I will check Hopstop out. Perhaps I can try it out when I go to San Francisco in September.