So now you can navigate any place like the locals.

Here's the cool thing about Google Maps directions: while they started out as driving directions only, they have gradually expanded the options, which now include directions using public transport, and for walking and biking as well. Using your smartphone, you just enter the address of your destination into Google Maps, turn on the voice directions, and off you go. That hand-held thing that has subsumed the function of a host of large and heavy devices that we used to have to lug around, such as the computer, the phone, the camera, the PDA (remember Palm?), the agenda, the newspapers, the wallet and who knows what else. Super-expensive versions told you the real-time route, accounting for any detours due to road contructions of traffic jams.īecause we all have smartphones now. Then - oh marvel! - there was the GPS device that was built in or (more commonly) precariously attached to your windshield with a suction cup. For a cross-country trip we're talking the weight of a small encyclopedia. Depending on the trip, you could end up lugging a small library back to your car, of the Trip-tik itself, plus the maps and the AAA guides that went with it. Then there was the AAA Trip-tik: the set of mini-maps where the friendly AAA representative highlighted the route you were to take to get from A to B. First there was 'You can't get there from here', that phrase that country folk love to trot out when a hapless out-of-stater got hopelessly lost in Maine and had to resort asking the natives for the directions.

Car directions google