Here’s a cool concept, turning manhole covers into a street-level navigation system that can direct visitors around a new city.

I must admit, when I first saw the shots of the Map Hole concept I thought it was a cute idea but one that would probably never happen. The issue is one of convenience and cost, man holes come in a uniform shape and size for a very good reason, it makes them easy to place and if need be, replace.

However, when advertising is incorporated into the plan, which it has been, it becomes possible to not only make the manhole covers pay for themselves, but also turn a profit. Nice, as long as your manholes aren’t out in the middle of the street.

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Some people can travel by landmarks alone. Some people can be given a list of streets and be just fine. I’m a landmarks type of traveler… as long as you’ve included the street names too.

Microsoft is playing around with some tech that will make Google Maps look like an old world map that Lewis and Clark might have used.

While onboard navigation systems are gaining in importance, maps are still the medium of choice for laying out a route to a destination and for way finding. However, even with a map, one is almost always more comfortable navigating a route the second time due to the visual memory of the route. To make the first time navigating a route feel more familiar, we present a system that integrates a map with a video automatically constructed from panoramic imagery captured at close intervals along the route. The routing information is used to create a variable speed video depicting the route. During playback of the video, the frame and field of view are dynamically modulated to highlight salient features along the route and connect them back to the map. A user interface is demonstrated to allow exploration of the combined map, video, and textual driving directions.

Since this is part of the Microsoft Research endeavors, no clue when this is coming out in even a beta release. But I hope it’s soon.

[ Microsoft ] [ Microsoft Research ]

I can’t remember the last time I used a map that wasn’t provided by Google or displayed on a GPS-equipped device, but Rand McNally has convinced me that traditional printed maps aren’t dead yet. Of course paper maps can still be easily torn, destroyed by rain, and never seem to fold up the same way once they’re opened, which is why Rand McNally has produced a series of tourist-friendly maps printed on microfiber cloths instead.

In fact during CES they were handing out maps of the Las Vegas strip, and as someone who’s never 2 feet from a microfiber cloth for cleaning my iPhone and camera lenses, I was instantly sold on the idea. I mean think about it, they’re waterproof, they can be easily crumpled up and crammed in a pocket without being damaged, and they never need a couple of minutes to lock onto a GPS signal or download map data. The fabMAPs aren’t for all travelers though, given their size they seem mostly targeted at tourists, and there’s only about 25 of them available at the moment (for cities like New York, Chicago, Beverly Hills, Las Vegas etc.) but at just .95 each on the Rand McNally website they could be one of the most useful things you stuff in your pocket.

[ Rand McNally fabMAPs ]

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