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Paper map sales are booming

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Re: Paper map sales are booming

#191

Post by navane »

dljsjr wrote: post #49

Anybody remember Triptiks from AAA? You'd go to a AAA office or call them on the phone, tell them where you were going, and in return you'd get a printed spiral top-bound pad with your trip broken down in to multiple legs, the roads/routes pre-highlighted, gas stops and prices estimated in, a list of sites for stopping off at, etc. All human curated and human annotated (the roads on your route were literally gone ove…

Most innovation sells you an inferior product for a lower price. It is almost never better than what was available in the past, just cheaper.

Life becomes a series of more, but lower value experiences.

Re: Paper map sales are booming

#192

Post by gernb »

kimbernator wrote: post #45

This is a little tangential, but last year me and my girlfriend went to Greece for the first time. A few days after we purchased the tickets, a book came in the mail. She had ordered a tourism guide for Greece that had some recommendations about what to see, where to eat, where to stay, etc. My first reaction was along the lines of "why would we do this when we have the entire internet? Each section is written by onl…

That reminds me of the difference between Japanese travel guides and US travel guides.

Most travel guides in the US look like Lonely Planet, Frommers, etc. A big book of words, paragraphs of prose describing places.

Most travel guides in Japan look like catalogs. Most pages are full of small pictures with small descriptions, and then an address and map page/id (maps are included in the guide). I personally find the Japanese guides more interesting because I can browse and look for something that catches my eye. With the US ones I have to spend hours reading it.

Here's an example

https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.risve...

Note: it's the same with restaurant guides. A western guide will often just be listings with descriptions. A Japanese guide will be full of pictures of the food and/or restaurant. Of course Yelp etc have user pictures now-a-days

https://www.amazon.co.jp/-/en/dp/4838754876?ref_=Oct_Oct_d_o...

(click the previews)

Re: Paper map sales are booming

#193

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

larrik wrote: post #190
massysett wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a lot of ways, electronic maps are still inferior to the Triptik. Even the Rand McNally showed highway rest areas and picnic areas. The Triptik also showed gas stations. Electronic maps often lack this entirely, at least in easy form. The Triptik shows what you need to know while on a long motor trip. The electronic map emphasizes details I don't need. At a glance the paper map tells me whether a road is free limi…

I've been growing pretty dissatisfied with the state of electronic maps. Basic things that are usually either impossible or difficult while using Google Maps or Apple Maps for directions: - What road am I on? What town am I in? - and other flavors of "where the hell am I, anyway?" - This is especially annoying when on the phone and the person is asking where you are, and the best you can answer is "Google says I'm X…

There's no way to see a street name on Apple Maps without zooming in entirely. And sometimes even then, I'll see something like Route 99 instead the name by which everyone refers to the road: "Broadway".

Re: Paper map sales are booming

#194

Post by dmurray »

kortilla wrote: post #182
nemonemo wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those two types of maps are targeting different groups -- paper maps targeting the somewhat advanced users who know the basic navigation and have little need to consult the legend. The electronic maps target much wider audience and can be dumbed down since people can interact with the map. Sure, the electronic maps probably can stuff more info to be shown at a glance, but my impression is that they chose not to.

Some of these things are too annoying to do at scale so they just skipped it rather than choosing to intentionally dumb it down. Making the call on what is a “scenic route” isn’t something you can just pull directly from highway department data.

You could predict it from Streetview data though! A small bit of computer vision would go a long way here. Actually this seems like a fun project for someone inside or (if the API is not too throttled) outside Google.

Re: Paper map sales are booming

#195

Post by MisterBastahrd »

ryanianian wrote: post #145
pdntspa wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flippant attitude that people have towards map-reading today is appalling. Maybe its the eagle scout in me but how can someone NOT want to learn to read a map? It isn't even that hard! What happens if your device fails you?

I'm also an eagle scout. Taught the orienteering merit badge for years. But secret: I have the absolute WORST sense of direction. I have no internal sense of orientation or distance. Seriously I get lost if I turn left out of the corner store instead of right. I can read a map with a compass and straight-edge and find where I am based on triangulation. But once I actually have to make realtime decisions using little…

Even before mapquest was a thing, I was recording directions from paper maps as if it was. Sure, I'd have a map open if I were driving in an area I was unfamiliar with, but I'd also write a list of roads and exits.

The only real major advantage that gps systems have over the list method is that they can tell you when you're near an exit. Back in the early 00s I was driving to New Orleans from Dallas on a particularly foggy night and I missed the same exit 3 times because I could barely make out the exit signs.

Re: Paper map sales are booming

#196

Post by kortilla »

warner25 wrote: post #15
joshstrange wrote: post #2

> His customers, he added, aren’t just looking to maps for directions, but as inspiration for future trips or even as art worth hanging. I think that alone accounts for the vast majority of this increase. The article throws that in as a minor detail but I'd bet money it's the only reason. Of course you don't get as many clicks for "More people are buying maps as art". 2 of the 3 examples of maps they give at the end…

I love maps, and I'll admit that my wife and I have a bunch of map art hanging on our walls, one of each city or state where we've lived, but they're not like actual maps that you could fold up and take on a road trip. I hadn't thought of hanging up that sort of map. I'll also admit that I haven't bought a paper map to put in the glove box of my car in over a decade. I have printed Google Maps before a trip, though.…

Where do you buy nice ones for the wall? I’ve wanted to do this but end up stumbling across random bespoke ones.

Re: Paper map sales are booming

#197

Post by shafoshaf »

dylan604 wrote: post #188
HappyJoy wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, yes! My Dad used to have these made for our summer road trips. I used to love pouring over the maps before the trip to get hyped up. Then, in the car, following along as we drove. I forgot about that till your comment reminded me. Thanks for the nostalgia!

I always wanted the computer program Clark used to plan the route for the family trip to Wally World.

But I was never able to chase the car with a Pac Man.

Re: Paper map sales are booming

#198

Post by jjgreen »

pm215 wrote: post #30

I buy paper Ordnance Survey maps because they come with a scratch-off code to get the map in their digital app. You can also pay an annual subscription of about 50 quid to get coverage of the whole UK, but for my usage, which is limited to fairly small geographic areas, I prefer to pay the 8 or 9 quid each for the paper maps covering the areas I care about, which then gets me access to that map forever, rather than h…

The OS do fabulous work, and not just of the UK: https://shop.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/the-moon-50th-anniversary-...

Re: Paper map sales are booming

#199

Post by reader_x »

A cartography professor of mine once advised me to take another career path because cartography was dying; he added, “Google Maps has terrible maps- but no one seems to care.” It heartens me to see in HN comments that some are noticing. A pet peeve of mine is when water bodies go unlabeled. An old-fashioned paper map like the kind inserted in National Geographic mags when I was wee included a breathtaking amount of information, but that requires careful design so element labels don’t overlap etc.

Re: Paper map sales are booming

#200

Post by ChuckMcM »

massysett wrote: post #161
dljsjr wrote: post #49

Anybody remember Triptiks from AAA? You'd go to a AAA office or call them on the phone, tell them where you were going, and in return you'd get a printed spiral top-bound pad with your trip broken down in to multiple legs, the roads/routes pre-highlighted, gas stops and prices estimated in, a list of sites for stopping off at, etc. All human curated and human annotated (the roads on your route were literally gone ove…

In a lot of ways, electronic maps are still inferior to the Triptik. Even the Rand McNally showed highway rest areas and picnic areas. The Triptik also showed gas stations. Electronic maps often lack this entirely, at least in easy form. The Triptik shows what you need to know while on a long motor trip. The electronic map emphasizes details I don't need. At a glance the paper map tells me whether a road is free limi…

I'm pretty convinced that Google just doesn't understand information economics. In case you haven't noticed, Apple maps are getting better and better and I prefer their turn-by-turn directions over that of Google.

The interesting thing is that Apple now offers "explore" vs "driving" maps, I hope they also add "walking" or "Cycling" maps. And because they aren't driven by advertising sales, the maps can be more useful without compromising sales revenue.

If Apple decided to invest in a crawler/indexer with a search front end to give Siri the data sources for better response, and to allow for "pure" informational search (rather than search-ad/revenue prioritized search), once it got good enough for that it would put Google into a very tight spot. (Well tighter than the one it currently finds itself in).

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