Building the Trip Tick

I’m getting ready for a road trip of about 1000 miles, so this weekend I was figuring out the route and picking hotels along the way. After working with trusty Google Maps for a while I realized I was using the wrong tool for the job and switched over to Ask.com’s maps.

Why? It’s one of those trips where I need to stop in five different places and try to scope out hotels just out of “big tourist” destinations to keep costs down. Ask.com really came through.

I could create a route to where I was headed and easily pick a town along the way as a potential stopping point. Hotels too expensive? I’d pick another town. It was a bit like using one of those sliding puzzles to get all the pieces correct, but I was master of the puzzle and Ask.com obediantly recalculated the route as I experimented. (Maybe you like an automated program or the travel folks to do this work. I frankly find this fun!) I also liked that I could bookmark the map right from the app, so I could come back to it later.

Maybe other folks like all the floating windows of other apps (Live Local, for example) but I like the simple, “stays put” interface of Ask’s maps. It’s hard to lose anything! If I had one wish for the Ask folks? I need a scale bar, please!