Mapopolis

Every city has its own unique mess of strange cross streets, unexpected dead ends, and odd street names. Sometimes navigating even a city you are familiar with can be difficult. Mapopolis can help.

Mapopolis is a free map reader for Palm. Detailed maps of the entire United States (by county) are available for download. The maps can be shown at varying levels of detail and various zoom levels. At its barest, the entire county is shown in a single screen with major highways and interstates drawn. At its most detailed, the screen displays two to three cross streets in each direction. You can pinpoint a specific address in this mode. It also calls out every Burger King, Pizza Hut, Subway, Taco Bell, and Baskin Robbins in the county (just in case you're hungry). More businesses are scheduled for the next version of the maps. A limited set of landmarks are also listed in the database and marked on the maps.

When you start Mapopolis you are given the option to start or to read the online documentation. Being the dedicated technical writer I am, I skipped the documentation. That was a mistake. Although Mapopolis is easy to use, it wasn't obvious which buttons did what. I kept tapping on the increase/decrease details buttons thinking I was adjusting the zoom level. The first tap on the increase details button looked similar to zooming in but then it looked like I had zoomed out. Confusion reigned, and I went back and read the getting started guide. Moral of this story: RTFM.

Once I figured out how to use it, I found a surprisingly robust map system with even small streets shown in the most detailed mode. The various zoom levels and detail levels provide different types of maps for different uses from a single map database. You can search for a street, a business, or a landmark. I loaded a map of Manhattan and tried to search for various museums as landmarks, but none of them were listed. This area of the database could use some work. I understand that these Burger King and Pizza Hut listings are paying for the application, but it is frustrating to see the fast food stores dotting midtown Manhattan but not seeing Times Square, the Museum of Modern Art, Port Authority, Penn Station, or Rockefeller Center marked.

Once I figured it out, the interface was easy to use. After starting the application and reading the Quick Start guide, the first screen will list the available maps. You can delete maps or select one to view. The map viewing screen has a toolbar at the very bottom that lets you control the zoom and detail levels, search for a street, business, or landmark, or go to the menu. The left most button, two left facing arrows, resets to the default details level and moves the zoom level all the way out. The next two buttons, left and right arrows, adjust the zoom level out and in respectively. The next buttons, more and less, adjust the detail level of the map. The find button launches a find screen that allows you to search for a street, business, or landmark by name or view lists of available businesses or landmarks. Finally, the menu button on the far right allows you to view a different map, read the documentation, or show a scale bar just above the toolbar.

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