This is an idea that’s been banging around in my head for a long time (and a number of you have mentioned it to me also, so thanks for kicking me in the butt): how to put the few places you really care about being close to on the map, and how can you get a sense for the scale of things.
The solution to both problems that I just rolled out is called “My Places”. The idea is that you can add your workplace, your girlfriend’s place, your school, your favorite gym, whatever to the map as a special blue pin to remind you where it is. Then, every time you look at a listing bubble, there will be a tab with a list of all your places, and the time it would take to drive and walk there (color coded, green for close, yellow for medium, red for far). The travel times will also show up in the side bar that shows up next to the original listing when you click through to it.
If you want to add a place or remove one, there are three places that you can do so – on the My Places tab on a listing bubble, on the little My Places menu in the upper left of the map, or on the original listing on the PadMapper sidebar.
It’s a pretty simple idea, but I hope it will be useful to all of you. I decided to push it out rather than wait until it was completely polished so that I could collect people’s impressions about it without committing too much time to polishing the wrong thing, so please let me know your feedback if you have any! Is it useful? Useless? I can be reached at padmapper@gmail.com.
Thanks a lot, and happy hunting!
Eric
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