1. iPhone Maps Are Here!

    July 07, 2007

    22 Comments | Trackback

    . . . well, so far just the New York City map. (I don’t mind announcing the new design of the site too.)

    the iPhone Map

    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

  2. 22 Responses to “iPhone Maps Are Here!”

    1. Robert says:
      July 8th, 2007 at 10:46 am

      Hi Bill,

      How about BART maps for the Bay Area San Francisco (CA)?

      Thanks,
      Robert

    2. Randy Reddig says:
      July 8th, 2007 at 11:15 am

      You could export the lot as a tiled PDF, or as an HTML table or series of div elements with the actual map as a background image.

    3. Mr. Grundle says:
      July 8th, 2007 at 11:48 am

      A good solution might be to save the files as PDFs and either access them via teh intrawebs (embedded in a web page) or, better yet, have the pdf emailed to your phone. Then it can be browsed even when you don’t have an edge signal. Like under ground. In a subway tunnel.

      My $0.02

    4. Simon Iannelli says:
      July 8th, 2007 at 12:13 pm

      I’m willing to help. But since I don’t have an iPhone (yet?) you have to tell me exactly what sizes you need. I could even make you an PS-action (or Droplet) for you.

      Just drop me an e-mail.

      Best regards
      Simon

    5. Tim says:
      July 8th, 2007 at 12:49 pm

      Hi Bill,
      Subway maps on the iPhone would be awesome! Unfortunately, my iPhone tells me something like “safari couldn’t download this file type” whaen I try to grab the NY map.

    6. Peter says:
      July 8th, 2007 at 1:02 pm

      Is there a reason you can’t keep it vector and save it as a pdf? I heard that the iphone can do the pdf dance. That way unlimited zoom with no degradation!

    7. g0pher says:
      July 8th, 2007 at 1:07 pm

      I’m sure there are better ways of implementing subway maps on the iPhone. Perhaps a web-based service would be better? Then maps could be easily zoomed, scrolled and manipulated via safari?

      eg, http://www.live.isubwaymaps.com would lead you to a small selection of subways (would be cookie sensitive to make your ‘default’ your most common choice). When you select your subway then it will lead to a large image – easily moved around.

      mail me with what you think..

    8. Matt says:
      July 8th, 2007 at 2:22 pm

      Is this the same Bill I stood in line next to in New Hartford for 9 hours?

    9. Little Bill says:
      July 8th, 2007 at 2:42 pm

      g0pher, I’d thought about that. The problem is that with most subway systems, they’re underground. You can’t get service underground! :)

    10. Little Bill says:
      July 8th, 2007 at 2:43 pm

      Matt, this is indeed the same Bill. Glad to see you found the site. How’s your phone?

    11. Helen Parziale says:
      July 8th, 2007 at 3:46 pm

      Downloaded the subway maps for New York, and had no problem unzipping the file. Put the folder in iPhoto. In each borough’s folder, one image could not be read by iPhoto. Checked all the images, and there doesn’t seem to be any segment of the subway system missing.

      Got: queens01.png through 06.png
      bronx01.png through 06.png
      brooklyn01.png through 16.png
      manhattan01.png through 07.png

      After the last. png in each folder, the next image was titled “Thumbs.db” Don’t know what that means.

    12. Little Bill says:
      July 8th, 2007 at 4:08 pm

      Hi Helen, you can delete the Thumbs.db file. I was once a Windows user and Thumbs.db is a windows file you can trash. :)

      Bill

    13. Helen Parziale says:
      July 8th, 2007 at 4:25 pm

      THANK YOU Little Bill.

    14. Nate says:
      July 8th, 2007 at 7:37 pm

      Hey Little Bill,

      The solution I have found in putting the subway maps on the iphone is to use PDF. The iphone will show more resolution on a pdf as an email attachment, particularly because when you zoom in the text remains crisp.

      However, this is not ideal, as you must email the map to yourself, pdfs arent the quickest to display/zoom in and out of, and for some reason you are still limited on how much you can zoom into a pdf even when using the pinch method. Also, you need to make sure you dont delete the email, and you wont be able to see the maps if you don’t have a connection to the net. (or at least I cannot see any attachments from any of my emails when I am not connected? – gmail)

      So maybe with a software update soon there will be better pdf functionality and that will solve all the problems?

    15. Nate says:
      July 8th, 2007 at 7:52 pm

      Something I just read on macrumors: Yahoo push email accounts actually cause the iphone to store attachments on the phone. Still not ideal, but if would be nice to be able to check these while you are underground (and hence no data connection)

      http://www.macrumors.com/iphone/2007/07/07/storing-documents-on-the-iphone/

    16. Matt says:
      July 8th, 2007 at 11:54 pm

      Loving the phone, congrats on the TUAW link, hope everything pans out for the maps!

    17. luciano says:
      October 25th, 2007 at 3:04 pm

      I try to find one sait o somethink to donwload for free the maps for Norwey or scandinavian and can somebody helpme please …because i am trying for 2weeks and nothink …..thanks

    18. luciano says:
      October 25th, 2007 at 3:08 pm

      can somebody send me a mail if is nice people if i can get the maps for norwey …i have a nokia6110 navigator and i cant use the GPS thanks

    19. dudesinmexico says:
      December 19th, 2007 at 12:46 am

      I have uploaded the NYC pdf maps on my iPhone. They look great but text is a bit too small at highest zoom resolution… Is there a way to generate a higher resolution pdf?

    20. iTransit says:
      March 9th, 2008 at 10:40 am

      We came up with this version of the NYC Subway Maps http://www.itransit.net
      Obviously you need to be connected, but it may be easier for those who have trouble figuring out the system a little easier.

    21. John says:
      November 10th, 2008 at 12:05 am

      Hey,
      Used to have your MTA map on my iPod and really loved it and came back here to update for my iPod touch. However when I click on the links for the various cities to download the file, I get the following error message:
      “Not Found
      The requested URL /wordpress/maps/ was not found on this server.
      Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.
      Apache/2.0.52 (CentOS) Server at isubwaymaps.com Port 80″

    22. admin says:
      November 10th, 2008 at 12:40 am

      Hey John! Fixed that for you—it should work now. Thanks for letting me know.

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