The Wall Street Journal looks at getting directions in a digital age:
Every day, Google users spend more than a million hours browsing Google Maps and Earth, and more than 750,000 sets of directions are printed from MapQuest. Since AAA launched its TripTik mobile application in spring 2010, it has been downloaded more than a half-million times.
We need help walking too. On HopStop.com, users in 68 metropolitan areas around the world give their current location and intended destination, and then select their mode of urban transportation: subway, bicycle, feet or a combination. (Driving directions start at car-rental offices or Zipcar locations.) Users of the HopStop website and smartphone app can request a stroller-friendly route.
We are giving such specific information about our current and future whereabouts that advertisers are able to fine-tune their pitches to us. The ad and mobile-technology industries even have a name for it—”location-based service.”
Image by QuickHoney
