I’ve been pretty crazy with real life lately and haven’t updated the site as often as I should, but in the coming weeks I plan on trying to do at least ONE map per week update (starting this week with London!) as well as writing up instructions for everyone else to make up maps for themselves!

Sorry for the delay folks! In the meantime, please enjoy the London map! — Little Bill

The first catch is, you have to email the maps to your iPhone. This means setting up email on your iPhone. I’m not a big fan of iPhone email, to be perfectly honest. Here’s the second catch: unless you’re using Yahoo! Mail, you have to download the map to your iPhone each time. Yahoo! Mail uses an IMAP connection, which gives you the option of actually downloading the attachment to your iPhone, thereby enabling you to access the maps even if you are underground with no service. Therefore, my suggestion is, to email the files as attachments to your Yahoo! Mail connected iPhone*. Good thing is, if you don’t have a Yahoo! Mail account, they’re free.

Lastly, I was able to make pannable and zoomable maps, but still needed to break the maps down by Borough. That means there’s a Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Bronx map. Still, the text is super sharp, you can zoom and pan much easier and, while it’s a bit slow rendering the PDFs, once you’re at full zoom, panning is cake.

Many thanks to Nate for the heads up on this one. Please let me know what you think!

* It seems that I had to shut down and restart my iPhone before it was recognizing that I had new Yahoo! Mail. Just a heads-up, if you’re experiencing that problem.

I was hoping that all I would have to do for the iPhone Subway Map was to upload one large jpeg of the entire map as blogger Jason Kottke implied (congrats on your newborn son, Jason!) However, the iPhone will resize and reformat any image to its native 320×480 at 160dpi upon import which is fine for most photographs, details and text such as that on a map, particularly a subway map, doesn’t stand a chance. Plus, you only get one level of zoom.

That said, I had to go ahead and chop up the map into iPhone screen sizes. You can still zoom to get some detail, but the text is still a bit difficult to read.

Soon I’ll be updating all of the maps on the site to accomodate all screen sizes. Once that daunting task is taken care of (any photoshop savvy people want to help?) I’ll start making new maps . . . hopefully! —Little Bill

Stolen. Gone. Over $1000 in electronics taken from me.

Ah, life in New York.

All that said and done it could have been worse. I could’ve been mugged. My housekeys, wallet or phone could’ve been swiped. Much as I love my iPod (and other things) they’re just material possessions.

BUT!

I’m going to ask you for help in raising money for a new iPod! If you love what I’m doing and you haven’t donated already, I’d request that you donate. It doesn’t have to be much, believe me. A buck, five, don’t go out of your way. If you can’t donate, well, I understand.

In return, I’m going to finally update the site. Every day or so, (it’s a holiday weekend) I’m going to update the site with a new 5G and nano map. Up until this time you’ve been stuck with just the 4G maps. Today I put up the 5G London Map. After that I’ll sequentially go through the rest of the cities on the site and list them.

For everyone who donates, I will publicly thank you on the site. Again, don’t feel as if you’re obligated to. If you can’t or won’t donate on principle, well hire me to design your web project or buy a photo from me (certain photos can’t be printed, as they’re digital). I’m also web designer and photographer, too.

— Little Bill

ps – if someone can let me know how many rows/cols the iPod Nano displays in thumbnail mode I’ll make a London map for that too.

You’ll also notice, if you hadn’t, that all previous maps have been restored from backup and are again online. What’s left to do is convert the rest of the maps to iPod 5G and Nano formats. This will come in the future… if you’d like to volunteer for help, I will be cooking up some instructions on how to make your own maps to submit.

In the meantime, enjoy the site! It’s back up and online. Please also note that the site is now 100% fully iSubwayMaps.com. Please update your bookmarks. We’re not iPodSubwayMaps.com any longer, thanks to Apple’s cease and desist. I’ve just finally complied with their orders.

— Little Bill

So I lost the site, maps (custom and sectioned), and photoshop/illustrator files in a hard drive crash a few months ago. I’ve been rebuilding the NYC map and once that’s done I’ll go ahead and start making 5G maps for the rest of the cities. If you want to help, feel free to shoot me an email: bill[at]ipodsubwaymaps.com and I’ll give you some tips on how to make maps.

Bill

I probably won’t be offering the map for the iPod Nano as it’s very difficult to read on a small screen, but if you’d really like it, let me know and I’ll give it a shot.

Enjoy!

— Little Bill

ps – more user submitted maps to come… I haven’t forgotten them!

Also I’m in the process of gathering information on existing city transit authority contact information to begin requesting licenses as well.

Bear with me folks, I haven’t been responding much to your emails and comments, but I AM reading them! In the meantime, I hope you’re enjoying the site and the maps!

— Little Bill

Also, I’ve made a few minor, but significant updates to the New York MTA Map. I had a station mislabeled on the 7 line, a connection on that line mislinked, and an entire line in Brooklyn mislabeled. Thank you to the folks who downloaded the map and made me aware of the errors. I would stress to everyone else to please scrutinize your MTA map, if you’ve downloaded it. I want to make sure this map is perfect, and it’s possible you’ll see something I might miss.

Enjoy guys!

— Little Bill