“Bing Maps Guides Public Transit - Softpedia” plus 2 more |
- Bing Maps Guides Public Transit - Softpedia
- Review: National Park Field Guides application - AP - msnbc.com
- Map-and-compass classes put safety first - AZCentral.com
| Bing Maps Guides Public Transit - Softpedia Posted: 17 Sep 2010 12:29 AM PDT Bing Maps added transit guidance to its directions options, for every one of you Eco-friendly public transportation users out there! So now, you can continue taking the bus, the subway or whatever local rail you want, without risking of getting in the middle of nowhere, because you can turn to Bing Maps and establish the best route in advance. This feature is actually a very important one, as the interest in public transportation is continuously growing, and the networks are developing to accommodate more and more people. In the United States alone, there are over 10.7 billion public transit passengers a year! As this is the first release of Bing Maps transit directions, the service will cover only 11 cities, but no need to worry as more will come, and quite soon apparently! For now, the new Bing Maps service will be very useful to you if you take public transportation in: Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New Jersey, New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington DC, and Vancouver. As it can be seen on the screenshot, every route option features transit information on the side, so that users would easily compare route options depending on what transit they know and which one they prefer. Bing made transit options available for bus, subway, local rail and light rail and information about the transit routing can be found on Bing's AJAX site. Besides the transit novelties, Bing maps has also made major improvements on business details and information about landmarks. You also can open movie house detail pages and see movie listings added to the Nearby panel, besides many details on hours of operation on these listings. Still, the best way of understanding why Bing is excited about the new services is to explore Bing Maps yourself and try out all the new features, and to help you out, click here! This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Review: National Park Field Guides application - AP - msnbc.com Posted: 14 Oct 2010 11:38 AM PDT ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK, Colo. — I'm in Rocky Mountain National Park watching the elk resting on the Estes Park golf course when someone from the Visitors' Center approaches me about taking a survey. I decide to impress him and pull out my iPad, loaded with the brand new National Park Field Guides application. I switch it on, and while it works to identify our position, smugly present it to him. "Er. Badlands National Park is a long way from here," he says of the park that is showing up as our location — 400 miles and two states from here. And so it is with this new application. I really want to like it, but it keeps disappointing me. On the positive side, the application covers 50 national parks and is free to iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch users. It's lighter to carry around than a guidebook and includes descriptions of the parks and lots of information. It lists plants and animals (bird, fish, mammals, trees and wildflowers); things that are poisonous and dangerous; and information about threatened and endangered animals. It even has audio of birdcalls. On the negative side, the information is provided in a format that resembles an encyclopedia. I can search for "elk" but not for "elk diet." Once I go to the entry for elk, I need to manually scroll through pages that cover: "description," "similar species," "breeding," "habitat," "range," "sign," and "track," until I get to a 700-word "discussion" section, where it tells me what elk eat. It also tells me that "the Roosevelt subspecies (C. e roosevelti), shown in plate 317 in its rain forest habitat in Washington's Olympic National Park, is found in the Pacific Northwest." Why, I wonder, does it refer to a photograph that isn't included in the guide, and why does it clutter up the page with information about a species that is 1,500 miles away from here? "The text content we use on eNature.com and in the mobile guide comes primarily from the print editions of the Audubon field guides," software developer Tom McGuire of eNature.com explains. "Even though it's been pretty carefully proofed over the 10 years that eNature has been online, a few little things slipped by." That's not to say the information isn't useful — I did learn that elk are mostly nocturnal — but it certainly isn't as interactive as one would hope from an application. As I read through the description of elk "bugling" (the term used to describe the species' mating call), I wanted to be able to bring up the sound. But there's no such capability. And what about maps? The "About Parks" section got me interested in a few hikes that it describes, but where are the trailheads? "We'll be updating and improving the guide app over the next year or two in a number of ways, based primarily on user feedback," McGuire says. He had no explanation for why the app put me in the wrong park about half the time, a problem I overcame by relaunching it until it got it right. Perhaps most annoying, each time I go to the app, it asks me to register, a move that McGuire says is intentional. (You can bypass this by clicking on the cancel button.) I start to wonder if it's just as easy to use a different application, so I hold my Droid phone up to a buck to see if Google Goggles — which searches the web for information about images — can give me basic information. But it fails completely. One other thing to keep in mind when using apps or electronic devices in national parks is that you will not always have connectivity. My final opinion of the national park app, which is being released by the National Parks Conservation Association, is that it's probably worth having if one is heading out to a park. After all, it doesn't cost anything and it covers 50 of the 360 U.S. national parks, including Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Cape Cod National Seashore, and Gettysburg National Military Park. Still, as the fellow from the Visitors' Center said after looking at the app: "I don't think this is going to keep people from stopping in to see us." The National Park Field Guides is available at http://bit.ly/NPCApp and a complete list of parks included is available at http://www.npca.org/parks/app.html. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Map-and-compass classes put safety first - AZCentral.com Posted: 11 Oct 2010 04:14 PM PDT by Ron Dungan - Oct. 11, 2010 04:07 PM Staying found is a lost art. Anyone who has spent time in the backcountry more than likely has at least one story of a wrong turn, a lost trail, a wayward hiking partner. Improving your map-and-compass skills is a good way to reduce such misadventures and keep track of where you are, said Chris Anderson of Arizona Climbing and Adventure School in Carefree. "When we talk about map and compass, we're talking about staying found," Anderson said. Backcountry travel is not easy. Signs may be miles apart. They break or become illegible. Hikers must be able to find their way by reading saddles and peaks, drainages and streams, which can be tricky to spot on maps if you don't pay attention and practice. "The compass gives you a way to verify all the decisions you've been making," Anderson said. Some hikers have forsaken map-and-compass skills for Global Positioning Systems, Anderson said. But GPS devices are not perfect - they can break or suffer blocked signals, or the batteries can die. "What the GPS did is it gave people a false sense of security," Anderson said. He's not against using them - "it's good way to doublecheck yourself," he said - but it's a good idea to have a backup plan, and a lot of hikers don't. "(GPS) was the big trend, and it still is a little bit," Anderson said, adding that more people are taking maps along with their GPS and learning the limitations of the device. For those who use a map and no GPS, Anderson recommends giving the device a chance: "When it does work, it's pretty amazing," he said. Learning to use a map and compass is not a flashy skill. It takes time. You can read about it in a book, but taking a class will help bring the techniques into focus and give you hands-on experience. You'll learn how to read the map legend, distinguish drainages from ridges, pick out saddles and peaks. You will learn to plot a bearing and triangulate your position. You'll learn that magnetic north is not the same as true north, a difference known as declination, and how to compensate for this. One way to improve your skills is to examine your map even when you know where you are, Anderson said. That way you can see how the hills, valleys and formations around you translate into lines on a map. At this time of year, map-and-compass courses are held at Papago Park in Phoenix, where there are enough hills, drainages, bushes and trees to keep things interesting. Classes are held in cooler places, such as Prescott, during the summer. The first hour or so is spent under a ramada. Students start off learning how to interpret the map lines and symbols. Next, they learn how to adjust and read the compass, and, finally, how to use the two tools together. After that, class members work as a team to plot a course to some distant marker in the park. This is pretty easy when you're sitting in the ramada, but when you actually have to follow your course and there are dozens of ocotillo bushes or other obstacles between you and your marker, things get interesting. Walking down even a small slope can mean the marker is hidden from view, and you need to account for every step you take to find it. Even with your newfound navigational skills, it's a good idea to tell someone where you're going, even if you intend to be out only for a short while. If the worst happens and you need help, a search-and-rescue team can't find you if it doesn't know where you are. Anderson has taught survival courses. They're fun, he said, but one of the first things he tells his students is this: "You don't have to learn how to make a bow and arrow and shoot a deer. You just need to learn to tell people where you're going." Reach the reporter at 602-444-4847 or ron.dungan@arizonarepublic.com. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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