Always entertaining to come upon ambiguities in information exchange.
A friend e-mailed saying we're "practically neighbors" when MapQuest helped him to see where I live (47 Kingston, Somerville (near Davis Square)). He let me know he lives at "44 Cedar Street, near Porter Square." And so I promptly turned to the same online tool to see where that might be, and typed in "44 Cedar Street, Cambridge, MA", and indeed found a very nearby address! But it wasn't really near Porter Square, unless you gave that a quite wide interpretation... Hmmmm.
Ah-hah, I wonder is it good old 44 Cedar Street, Somerville, MA? Ah, yes, clickity-click, type-type, and there it is, another nearby address (and near Porter Square). Interesting.
It was then I discovered that MapQuest can do something I'd never asked it to before: "Add Location":
You can put a bunch of addresses on one map, label them, assign icons (like pins, stars, and so forth), and get an enormous, quite custom, URL that you can then zing around in e-mail, blogs, and browsers to share the joy.
Fun!
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My e-mail back to Lars:
MapQuest: Maps: map
I'm enclosing the enormous URL to a funny custom map (with not one but three
positions) I drew using MapQuest:
- my house
- your house
- and your ghostly Cambridge cousin's house
[that is, the "44 Cedar Street" in that other nearby, "Somerville wannabe"
town ;^) ]
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http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?mapdata=EifUonSP7c3NebxVtmnURk6gd9UfB7oWLkAmxk5YqGYn1XOtbF3ImklA8DcrGdnaAPAezR9hRk6Ar1eyGlQm2uCD%2fhiBqoXEJzZS1%2fnPeXY9wntTEmBQSuHLkragdC2wl1hY1j5Z0P8%2bb4NVxANJfybniK6liEFZGSOo%2f9rL%2fANrRLixeRKDp1NMEhzlgH4rmX566zOuExdr6ZmXlcJ1aK1LAqRwrLUz4EHiRH%2fRCjvGmPLTwkpIPJw3mienpHT4T5IDTThmk0%2fPSqv1Tviz%2fscKC3K8xcPWc%2fkKeYwU8V5ldNEir42Uifu6rjpcBMwBPeMM0lDMskjIP4Qm8NZrmFmAX1KeJ8aTpNopGzEiyRCnEfw3FdRTPmtZ1Knte1Kq%2f1m2ID%2fmDbyeKKYgCUFzRqGQ2DN0XIT1tavUnF1w7cnDIjeBpWK5KepkVYUnGfABhh0i7TwfGPRFnjUTEf%2fIwyfqCRYPmttadqNryWLG4LEA153ai6UUhBaa3%2bPClHRB%2bI%2fumBzBC0NvbLCCONH8XmJCSXLANiTCdk35yZvJ9T5DQy7nPviiEiAZuG34HDZFUvqWWarGOPUVhRclxMD%2bjiuqxZzUTun8JWAaZ67fE%2fJC3PsS8hJYJ1sSj9fCB2r%2bqx1%2bIUpRpsmUjQGMUxbT%2fZR2jyKAzAhY5IyYb7faBy%2fLVJDCSDPsQYzmVBxSQQgCR8cIRB85AMGlrqTh2fR2rddWjSJBLyfVEVyW0hp%2f1%2bipNBtgfofDrmktqaT9Wy7a%2fMM5FzCCKHsdPPGYk1a5j1YRt5u5ZKARJyaQNAHfiyCC6crIHd%2fjvF7KZZzj6yBbqKBtjl3bFSrhWGuHHJmHtDziIhj9z%2bqLZWK3SI012Wzfdb5mP8PCh1a4vSD25%2fw7dHDGBjUsklGL7m0cC%2fa%2bHBxUwr5BetQ3JcErDTlbRfuHwLJQHn6Dtv%2fX2BapSLKM0mMPuMN9jYA%3d
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It's funny because though you did mention "near Porter," you didn't say which city, and I first typed in Cambridge (!). Interestingly (as you'll see on the map, if you can get your browser to swallow the whole enormous long URL -- you may have to manually chop out any linebreaks created by e-mail sending & receiving), the 44 Cedar in Cambridge is even more of a "practically neighbors" location...
Posted by William in category: Web at September 24, 2003 08:38 AM