Android now has an awesome Navigation system that gives turn-by-turn directions. It's theoretically got biking directions (although that's not available here in Munich yet). So, I figure, an obviously great implementation of this tool would be the following:
1) Go to Google Maps and cross-reference it with the Munich bike path map (http://maps.muenchen.de/radlstadtplan_2009/radlstadtplan_2009.html?str=Marienpl.&num=8)
2) Plan out a nice scenic route for the day that utilized bike paths as much as possible, and goes through one or two parks, monuments, or whatever.
3) Export the route in Google Maps via one of the many methods available
4) Pop it into the nav system, pop in one of my headphones, and go!
Instead, there's virtually no integration, which means that I either have to memorize my route (or else keep popping out my phone and double-check my location on the way), or else utilize the default Navigation routes, which always go through the dangerous, ugly, car-priority streets.
Off the top of my head, I can think of many applications for this tie-in:
--When going to your friend's new place, he can send you a route of the best way to get there.
--You're going to a picnic in the park, and you want to send your friends the best route to the closest parking lot.
--You want to publish some of the best walks or bike rides in your favorite cities.
--You found a great shortcut in town and want to share it with all your friends who regularly have to drive through the same area.
Or whatever. What confuses me is that this functionality has got to be really, really easy for Google to build in; the hard part is figuring out the route, and that part's already done! The Nav software only needs to shout out the directions - shouldn't that be easy?
Anybody else find this to be a maddening lack of obvious, simple functionality?
3 comments:
Hmmm - I think you can solve your problem pretty quickly using SL4A - the scripting layer for android.
Use the directions api to request the bike directions, get them in text, then wait to close in on each waypoint and at the waypoint call the text to speech functions...
So now that I've done all the hard work of speccing this out, I'll expect a prototype later this week.
I like the DIY aspect of it, but rather than creating a feature that's missing from Navigation, this is re-creating the turn-by-turn (and, if my prior work is any indication, it will be a crappy re-creation at that).
Still, you've inspired me to finally install SL4A. I'll poke at it and report progress later.
Unfortunately there's definitely no way to do it w/ SL4A (well, no relatively easy way to do it) - Google Maps is able to export routes but only via addresses, not via coordinates. I suppose I could get coordinates for each turn along the way along with actions, export that into some kind of file, and then write a script to export that, but....that's a lot of work on the backend that would be pretty tricky to automate (although, on the bright side, the automation would be on the non-phone side, so I'd have a lot of tools at my disposal).
In related news, searching through the Google Mobile forums indicates that I'm not the only person who wants this:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Mobile/thread?tid=3f57db5d64f8bb29&hl=en
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Google+Mobile/thread?tid=695b66bd37fe6271&hl=en
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