Product Overview: NavPro – an Online Map Service From Maps.com
By: Hal Reid
Senior Technical Editor, Directions Magazine
| (Mar 24, 2005) |
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While maps on the Web aren’t new, this NavPro subscription service is a little different in two respects. First, it is targeted toward the business user, and second, it is very affordable. The “ticket to ride” can be purchased for three periods of time: a week ($6.95), month ($14.95) or year ($69.95). These prices are for unlimited use during the period purchased. If you buy before April 15th, 2005 the annual fee is $59.95. Weekly or monthly rates work well if you need the service for a single project.
The next question is: “Why would I do this when I can get maps and directions from other sources for free?” NavPro offers a little more than the free services, like traffic conditions, cost to go from here to there, and what hotels and gas stations are along the way. With the rental model offered by NavPro, someone else keeps the data current.
Another advantage of this service is that it is directly customer driven. If you want a new feature, Maps.com will entertain adding it. When that new feature is implemented, there is no upgrade or download, it just appears. This is a dynamic service, scaling and adjusting to the needs of the customer base. To stay competitive and distinguish itself from the other players, Maps.com has to be fast on its feet and receptive to change.
There are two immediate advantages when you subscribe to NavPro. First, there are no ads or pop-ups, and second, the user interface is structured in steps. It is just “four steps for this, five steps for that.” It’s so simple and intuitive you never forget how it works, even if you don’t use it for a while. Frankly, you probably already know how it works before you get to the user interface. How about a training curve of flat instead of the usual straight up?
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At left are the choices on the NavPro menu (click image for larger view). Note that you can map single and multiple addresses. How about being able to upload a file of addresses and see them on the map? Of course you can, and there is a choice of symbols. In routing you can do the point-to-point and city-to-city, but also include up to 18 stops. You can give yourself a “heads up” for your morning commute by seeing what road conditions might cause a delay. Then, of course, you can route yourself around them.
Geo Tools lets you get a lat/long for a single address or multiple addresses (upload a file), select the symbols and even reverse geocode (provide lat/long and get the address back). Be sure to use a minus sign in front of the longitude!
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What does the user interface look like? In all cases, the NavPro menu remains on the left, and here is an example of the multiple address matching dialog (see image at right, click image for larger view). You can enter addresses directly or upload an Excel or delimited text file.
If you address match a point and it isn’t quite where it should be, you can move the crosshairs on the map to where it really is and get the correct lat/long. That's a neat feature. How about a route? This is the route user interface and the resulting map from Boston to Atlanta.
The traffic map is
very useful and
like the user interface, easy to read. The pull
down just above the map
lets you select the city. The cross hairs on the map can be
changed to adjust the center of focus. Each traffic event is listed on
the left, and the legend is listed
just below the map.
Now that we know how to get there and what sort of traffic problems we might encounter, what is the trip going to cost? We are driving to Atlanta in our fuel-efficient small car and oil prices are still at least $55 a barrel. The cost is $87.69 for the 1,085.29 miles or if we take it one step further, about 8¢ a mile (not counting maintenance, depreciation, insurance, etc.).
One last thing we would like to know is where the restaurants, hotels and gas stations are along the way. The map below shows this. At the bottom of the map is a listing of all the restaurants, hotels and gas stations found for this stop. The generalized location of each of these is very handy so you know how far off the highway these facilities are. Just under the map itself is the location of the center point of the map, showing address, city, ZIP Code and coordinates (see the text in the green box, above). All graphics courtesy of Maps.com.
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Now that we know how to get there and what sort of traffic problems we might encounter, what is the trip going to cost? We are driving to Atlanta in our fuel-efficient small car and oil prices are still at least $55 a barrel. The cost is $87.69 for the 1,085.29 miles or if we take it one step further, about 8¢ a mile (not counting maintenance, depreciation, insurance, etc.).
One last thing we would like to know is where the restaurants, hotels and gas stations are along the way. The map below shows this. At the bottom of the map is a listing of all the restaurants, hotels and gas stations found for this stop. The generalized location of each of these is very handy so you know how far off the highway these facilities are. Just under the map itself is the location of the center point of the map, showing address, city, ZIP Code and coordinates (see the text in the green box, above). All graphics courtesy of Maps.com.
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