I was excited to see the new Destination Maps from Bing that allow you to create custom simplified driving directions to your destination with your choice of look. The sketch-like maps strip out levels of detail in order to ease navigation by limiting the number of roads and features that are presented on the map.
When I first saw these, it seemed that I’d seen them before. A quick look back in my Blog archives uncovered this post about a MacArthur genius grant given to Maneesh Agrawala for his work, including his concept of LineDrive. Destination Maps is the latest iteration of Agrawala’s idea that was sold to Microsoft back in 2001. It’s great to see this functionality re-purposed here for the general public as it’s an important contribution and reminder that often simpler is better, particularly with routes in complex urban areas.
You need to download the latest version of Silverlight in order for this to work.
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I agree. I’m generally not much of a fan of Bing maps, but this option is great. While everyone else seems to be getting more and more complicated, it’s nice to see someone opting for simplicity.