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by James Robertson.
Original Post: Ever wonder about driving directions?
Feed Title: Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants
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Every so often when I get directions from MapQuest I just blink - the part of the route I understand doesn't always correspond to the directions they give me, and sometimes, they are just flat wrong. Last summer I tried to get directions to a girl scout site for my daughter, and MapQuest sent me to the wrong county. Well, it's not just MapQuest - looks like Microsoft's map tools suffer from some of the same issues. Get a load of this map:
"The suggested route starts in the middle of the Baltic Sea on a ferry from Stockholm to Helsinki. Then you drive around in the Southern part of Finland before, magically, driving across the Baltic Sea on 'local roads' to arrive in Tallinn," writes Toben.
"The distance is given as 68.4 miles (which sounds about right) and the estimated time for the journey is 4 hours and 36 minutes. The return journey is by the same route in reverse, only now it takes 4 hours and 53 minutes."
So we know the flying car will do scheduled pickups - so long as you're prepared to bob around in the North Sea.
The Register has a lot of fun with MS on this one, but my experiences with MapQuest tell me that it's not about MS - it's about crappy data coming in from somewhere. I rather suspect bad data entry with the all too obvious results.
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