Time was, you could install Mapquest's own direction-specific software on your PDA and download directions that were then very usefully viewable complete with--go figure-- maps. This time in the oh-so-distant-past was something on the order of 7 months ago, when I was doing site surveys out in Charleston and I gathered up all my directions before my trip.
Fast forward to today and what do I find? Mapquest has taken a simple easy to use thing and broken it all for the joys of "Partnership" and a chance to join a larger marketing conglomeration in scrapping for user data. Their new purveyor of PDA based directions? Avantgo. (Note: The lack of a link to their shitty little website is quite deliberate.
So, being curious and willing to install a bunch of crud on my PDA, I install the fucker. I also establish (because it's mandatory) an Avantgo account. In addition to making me remember yet another user name and password, these twits insist I provide my marital status, salary range, dwelling type (!?) and other none of their goddamn business information. I must then tell them of at least 4 interests I have in their offerings (Business, Tech, Travel, Sports, Finance, etc.) But I just want to download some damned directions. I don't want news. I am not interested in Avantgo's "other offerings". Nevertheless, I suck it up and pick the 4 least unappetizing. Bleah.
So I go back to mapquest with my Avantgo stupidity all set up and save my directions. At last. Here we are. I will get to not carry around slips of stupid paper I invariably lose. But wait. What's this? Aparently Avantgo is used to serving up a steady stream of content, news whatever. A set of directions then becomes a "channel". Like CBS, or DC101. My directions have been jammed into the same logical parigidim (sp?) as a recurrent news feed. How dumb. How ludicrous. How unintelligible to the unwashed masses. Gaddamit. I JUST WANT MY DIRECTIONS.
And for the record, once I got my directions there's no maps and I can no longer page neatly through exactly one direction at a time in very large print. Stupid sellouts. I know they did it for the money, and the need to be profitable, but why does profitability in this case have to mean doing the wrong thing???
Posted by karen at March 1, 2002 12:00 AM