You see, unlike the best GPS navigators, Streets & Trips doesn't announce street names, as in "Turn left at Doubletree Lane." Street names would be helpful when you're driving in any densely packed urban area with many side streets and alleys. Microsoft Streets & Trips 2007 gives voice directions, as in, "Turn left in point-three miles." That's good, but we'd like more details. It would be nice if Streets & Trips integrated with Google, too, but odds are that won't happen anytime soon. Then again, you could use Windows Live before leaving the home or office. If you're in your car, this means either municipal Wi-Fi, which most cities don't have, a wireless cellular modem, or some other flavor of over-the-air broadband. To access Windows Live, naturally you'll need an Internet connection. This system is pretty slick-with some caveats. Streets & Trips pinpoints all matches on a local map, allowing you to select a business and get directions from your current location. By clicking the Windows Live icon on the Standard toolbar, you can search for businesses in your areas, such as shoe repair and so on. It's hard not to look at the facts and conclude that desktop applications- at least desktop mapping applications- are dead.Microsoft Streets & Trips 2007 software now integrates with Windows Live Search, Microsoft's answer to Google. It's faster, it's simpler to use, and it has more features. But in every other case, Google Maps is superior. Streets and Trips will still be helpful in one very specific situation: disconnected use with a laptop and/or a GPS. And unlike Streets and Trips, it's free- or at least ad-subsidized. Plus it's always up to date we're guaranteed to be using the latest version with the newest features. Google Maps turns all those browser-based application weaknesses into strengths, by offering a bunch of online-enabled features that Streets and Trips doesn't: satellite view, real-time traffic data, and the new street view. Streets and Trips is free to harness the complete power of the desktop PC, whereas Google Maps is limited to web browser scripting and HTTP calls to the server. Web applications are evolving online at a frenetic pace, while most desktop applications are mired in circa-1999 desktop user interface conventions, plopping out yearly releases with barely noticeable new features. All the innovation in user interface seems to be taking place on the web, and desktop applications just aren't keeping up. But Streets and Trips seems to be completely stuck in the old world mentality of toolbars, menus, and right-clicking. There's no reason Streets and Trips couldn't adopt the same conventions as Google Maps. Here's how I get directions to the club using Google Maps: We're already up 6 seconds since the browser-based app loads in 1/3 the time of the desktop application. Let's compare the same task in Google Maps. It's an incredible amount of work for what is probably one of the most frequent use cases for mapping software- getting directions from point A to point B.
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