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NYC Subway maps for iPhone

This post will initially have a limited audience--residents of New York City--but I think the idea behind it is interesting enough that other folks might benefit as well. Khoi Vinh has whipped up a cool NYC subway map for the iPhone that takes advantage of the iPhone's thumbnail system for photos. Basically, he's cut up the MTA subway map in such a way that you can pan across the map with the forward and back buttons. The map tiles also overlap a little bit on all sides to make panning more natural. So taking this idea, apparently originally borrowed from Mike Essl, I figured other iPhone aficionados might well whip up similar maps for their own particular circumstances.

[via MacVolPlace]

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Odds and ends iPhone

This post will initially have a limited audience--residents of New York City--but I think the idea behind it is interesting enough that...
 

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Dan Semaya

All of you talking about bookmarking the PDF are obviously not from New York. There is no cell service in the subway. I had used the data: bookmark hack to store the map PDF and timetables but that slowed down my bookmark sync with iTunes tremendously.

August 30 2007 at 12:00 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Aap!Global

Tokyo, JR Tokyo + Santiago + San Francisco Maps @

http://blog.aapglobal.com/2007/08/29/subway-system-maps-for-your-iphone-tokyo-sf-santiago-more/

August 29 2007 at 9:00 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
jack

Sorry, the link didn't come through for the DC version. It's at http://www.barse.org/?p=647

August 29 2007 at 3:37 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
jack

Gabe: in DC the bookmark idea won't work unless you're above ground. AT&T has no coverage in the underground stations. While the DC Metro's online map loads fine via WiFi, it's a tad slow (!) on EDGE.

I did a DC version of this idea and posted it here.

August 29 2007 at 3:12 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
periqueblend

I really hope that someone does this for SFMuni. Currently the design, UI and functionality of their transit map is teh sux. A bonus would be the live train/bus map which shows where the buses are.

August 29 2007 at 2:19 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Gabe

or you could just bookmark the map pages in safari and just go there, loads like a charm, and since you would most likely be in the city where you need the map, there should be a fast data connection, no country EDGE. Why waste 2.5mb on this map when you could add one more song!

August 29 2007 at 12:52 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Gabe

Actually, what should have been done is the following.

Download the PDF from the MTA, resize it so that the file is in the 50-100kb range and e-mail it to yourself as an attachment. I have a folder on my .mac account called maps and I keep maps in there, take them where ever I go. Done and done! You can zoom, pan, just like it was meant to be, none of this photo switcheroo crizap! (I think that's how Snoop Dogg says crap?)

August 29 2007 at 12:36 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
PSM

This is one of the things keeping me from the iPhone long-term if there's not a solution. Viewing the map as a single large image is no problem at all on my Treo or just about any PDA I've ever owned ever! While this solution is clever, we shouldn't have to jump through these hoops. Remember before you could drag Google Maps around and had to hit the arrow keys at the edges to pan? Remember how hard it was sometimes to follow the path to your destination? That's what it will be like. Right this very minute I can drag the entire NYC subway map around with my finger, in full resolution and zoom in and out at will. Isn't this exactly the sort of activity the iPhone is supposed to excel at? Apple should be embarrassed that people have to resort to this kind of solution.

To be honest, my map isn't that big of a file, it's a GIF of about 200kb or so, roughly 1000x1200. Can the iPhone really not handle this, or is it the problem with the resolution getting reduced?

August 29 2007 at 12:01 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
andy

http://www.littleapplescripts.com/splittingimage.html SplittingImage was pretty cool, but doesnt seem to have been updated for a while....

August 29 2007 at 11:04 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Joo

I did the same thing with the Washington, DC subway maps. I created the larger map, cut it up into 4 sections, and sync'd the images to my iPhone.


August 29 2007 at 10:38 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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