7 ms·

Show HN: Find the fastest route via a place

88 points by FriedPickles 13y ago

outericky 13y ago
This is quite neat. Any way to extract the directions once I decide which way point I want to go through?
- FriedPickles 13y ago
  Thanks! There's a small "Open this route in Google Maps" link that will give directions via the selected location. I'm playing with ideas to make that more prominent.
  - excitom 13y ago
    How about when you click one of the suggestions, go ahead and open the route in google maps.
MasterScrat 13y ago
It's not obvious what kind of places you can specify in the "via" field... it would be nice to have autocompletion there. too.
aaronpk 13y ago
If you're using Google Maps and are looking at a route from A to B, you can click any point on the path and drag it to anywhere on the map, and the route will update to pass through the point you selected. Example: http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2835/9667570442_4689c021f7_o.png http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2835/9667570442_4689c021f7_o.p... The only downside is you can't search for the place to stop at, you have to find it on the map.
- zeckalpha 13y ago
  Until the recent UI overhaul, you could add additional stopping points, and drag to reorder them. It made solving the traveling salesman problem... I mean planning circuitous routes easier.
  - graue 13y ago
    "Until the recent UI overhaul"? I still have the feature exactly as you described it in my browser.
    - emhs 13y ago
      This is referring to all the push to use "The New Google Maps". One is not currently obligated to use it, but it's there and being pushed. He seems to be using it.
    - jpatokal 13y ago
      Dragging to change the route is still there, but multiple stops (more than just A & B) are not. http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/2013/08/04/google-maps-multiple-stops-feature-bing-maps-mapquest/2604035/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/2013/08/04/goog...
johnnyo 13y ago
Great idea. I often like to find something "along the way", especially for long road trips. Just a datapoint, trying to find a Boston Market along my route gave me lots of results that weren't a Boston Market. You might need to do a little better matching on the via portion of the data.
- DanielStraight 13y ago
  On that note, I'd love a Google Maps feature to see duration along the route so I can see where I'll be around lunch and dinner time on a road trip.
- dmckeon 13y ago
  OP may want to partner with lodging sites - road-weary travelers may not know where they will want to spend the night until late in the day, and the less expensive motel choices are often in smaller towns on their route, so a "search along route" function can be more useful than tools like Around Me with a "search around placename" function that requires iteration over many placenames. I tried "Boston Market" between San Mateo and San Jose, and got 7 results, of which 2 were Boston Market locations, 1 a Harry's Hofbrau, 2 more are probably restaurants, and 2 appear to be unrelated. Trying Boston Market "without quotes" produced many more results, including all the above, and also "Putnam Lexus," "Intel Capital," "eBay," "Aol," and, more tellingly, the "Fish Market" near Fry's in PA. So, users should employ double quotes in multi-word searches, and be selective in choosing from the results.
n00j 13y ago
The classic google maps lets you do this with any number of points. Just the new maps removed this feature: https://www.google.com/maps?saddr=Mineta+San+Jose+International+Airport+(SJC),+1701+Airport+Blvd,+San+Jose,+CA&daddr=San+Mateo,+CA+to:San+Francisco+International+Airport,+San+Francisco,+CA+to:San+Francisco,+CA&hl=en&sll=37.56744,-122.170715&sspn=0.476771,0.686646&geocode=FXs1OgIdAIC7-CE-fvZtP0T6vCmbxbP6w8uPgDE-fvZtP0T6vA%3BFXAqPQId63W1-ClFVanvYJ6PgDGnG8wt9PyO_Q%3BFRT7PQId3Ii0-CE_7c0aV1zypClVVVVVjHePgDE_7c0aV1zypA%3BFVJmQAIdKAe0-CkhAGkAbZqFgDH_rXbwZxNQSg&oq=San+M&mra=ps&t=m&z=11 https://www.google.com/maps?saddr=Mineta+San+Jose+Internatio...
- FriedPickles 13y ago
  The difference here is Google requires you to give a specific location (e.g., an "instance" of McDonalds), whereas my tool helps you decide which location to stop at when there are many workable options along your route.
- uptown 13y ago
  It's still baffling to me that they got rid of multiple-stage trip routing. Sure, you can drag the route to add waypoints - but it's nowhere near as precise as providing an address, and gets complicated once you start needing to add three or four stops along a route.
thesash 13y ago
This is super cool! I can't tell you how many times I've been driving between LA and San Diego or LA and San Francisco, and just wanted to find a coffee shop, edible food, or even a gas station. For all the things Google maps is great at, this is not one of them (despite some of the comments here to the contrary). Great work, and if you'd care for some unsolicited advice, a mobile optimized version would make this a killer roadtrip companion, and if you wanted to, you could certainly wrap it in an app and sell it.
- erikig 13y ago
  Indeed. I would also recommend giving your users a way to reach out (twitter, fb etc). Incidentally, I'm running late to a birthday party and I'm trying to pick up a gift on the way. I couldn't remember the site URL and had to spend some time searching through HN to find it. Thanks anyhow!
sardonicbryan 13y ago
This is one feature that I miss from my Garmin GPS -- ability to set a route, and then search for locations or types of locations along the route.
acowlichenbag 13y ago
http://dpaste.com/1365011/ http://dpaste.com/1365011/ http://redd.it/1lnun3 http://redd.it/1lnun3 I killed christopher 'aempirei' abad with my 5" dick Cowabunga, dude! And now you're going to die wearing that stupid little hat. How does it feel!? You got caught with the seat of your pants flying down and now everyone laughs at your little picopenis on a daily basis. Microchipping a fellow hacker just because you can't sniff out your own? Hilariously inept. Throwing a well-known, contributing veteran of the hack/trollscene into a mental institution just because you had a hangover and forgot to take your klonopin? Over the top. Having a wanton disregard for the history of the internet, the hackscene, trollscene and everything about humanity in general? Get a clue. Your holier-than-thou attitude can screw back off to the 1980's. Yes, folks, christopher 'ambient empire' abad has been bitchtagging and torturing anyone that walks by him just because, well, "I feel like it!" Yes, folks, christopher 'ambient empire' abad fails to understand the first rule of the U.S. system: you can always just buy people off with cash. ' We've been talking to your friends, coworkers and they've been telling us what a lazy, unappreciative little shit you are. Not to mention a sociopath of the lowest order. You won the birth lottery and coasted your way to the top of the U.S. system on a skateboard. Now it's going to be a fun ride when we push your little deck the way back down. You are nothing but a barking little dog who got caught sneaking up the backstairs into the big people's club and now you're being thrown out the window. Your last thought as you realize nothing of value will be lost when your head cracks on the floor of a 12x12 supermax prison cell: "I like to copy from my 1337 civics textbook." Sayanora, sucker! Malaclypse the Younger http://pastie.org/8295259 http://pastie.org/8295259 http://pastebin.com/6CsUg70D http://pastebin.com/6CsUg70D
jamessb 13y ago
This looks really useful. However, it would be nice to give a link to the homepage of each option, especially when the user searched for something vague like "cafe" rather than a specific chain and so might want additional information before deciding which to visit.
Raphmedia 13y ago
Oh! That's awesome once you figure out what it is! You should make it clearer that the big feature is the "via" ! It's presented as an after thought on the website's design, while it is in fact the main feature.
rwhitman 13y ago
This is brilliant. Just such a useful idea. But I would say that this should have been 'mobile first', and would strongly suggest expending effort on mobile experience. This is large and by far something I'd be more likely to use on my phone than anywhere else and its very hard to use on the phone right now
- wbobeirne 13y ago
  Agreed, or at least a breakpoint at ~720 that makes it stack vertically (i.e. http://cl.ly/image/0m30232n1N1A http://cl.ly/image/0m30232n1N1A)
  - FriedPickles 13y ago
    That looks great, thanks. I'll try to make this happen soon.
    - prawn 13y ago
      Maybe also have URLs update automatically for copying and pasting? At the moment, it stays as http://road.li/ http://road.li/ Allowing people to share URLs might increase adoption of the site. You need to make use of your site a habit or people will think "Neat" and then forget about it. It was very fast for me from South Australia. Design needs work, but functionality was decent. Well done.
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
shire 13y ago
I was looking for something like this for so long, very useful!.
homakov 13y ago
Lol, i can just find route A to B and then B to C.
- zackbloom 13y ago
  With this app, B is a category ("hardware store" or "bank"), rather than a specific location. That's the innovation.
  - zeckalpha 13y ago
    Google Maps used to do that.
    - peterwwillis 13y ago
      The old maps still does that, but it does not pick the ones along your route and sort based on shortest trip. In any case, used to is not really useful.
- peterwwillis 13y ago
  Go from: Columbia, MD to: Hampden, Baltimore, MD via: goodwill It overlays the goodwill stores on your route and then puts the one with the least time out of your way on the top of the results. That'll save you time from having to first figure out which B to use, then do the mapping between it and A and C. ....Granted, the first two goodwill locations no longer exist, but that's Google's fault for not delisting them. This thing seems to be really promising.
brndnmtthws 13y ago
Needs bike directions.
peter_l_downs 13y ago
Needs some debouncing! Other than that, it's awesome.
dxbydt 13y ago
Here's a handy little problem you can solve with road.li - There are 5162 KFC outlets in USA. Say I want to eat a chicken breast at every one of these locations. What's the shortest route that connects all 5162 locations ? Do a topological sort of all kfc locations and run road.li iteratively ie. route from kfc-1 to kfc-3 via kfc-2, kfc-3 to kfc-5 via kfc-4, etc. until kfc-5162 - that should be a bloody interesting map. KFC will fork out hard cash for that sort of thing. Then try Domino's, Taco Bell etc. http://ezlocal.com/blog/post/10-largest-fast-food-chains-in-the-us.aspx http://ezlocal.com/blog/post/10-largest-fast-food-chains-in-...
- jffry 13y ago
  "What's the shortest route that connects all 5162 locations" AKA Traveling salesman problem? Even with a few hundred cities that would be difficult to find the optimal solution, let alone thousands. You could find a decent to even good solution with other algorithms, though
  - Derander 13y ago
    One thing to note about this specific problem: this is an example of the traveling salesman problem with a metric. This makes efficient (good) approximation algorithms a possibility. Many NP-hard approximation algorithms classes teach a 1.5 approx known as the Christofides algorithm. This algorithm is guaranteed to provide an approximate solution that is no worse than 1.5 times the optimal total distance, and often much better.
  - pyk 13y ago
    For the ambitious, some of the leading code for solving the TSP to optimality is Concorde (at best it has optimally solved an 85,900 "city" instance): http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/tsp/concorde/downloads/downloads.htm http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/tsp/concorde/downloads/download... or solve/run Concorde on Argonne National Laboratory's server here: http://neos.mcs.anl.gov/neos/solvers/co:concorde/TSP.html http://neos.mcs.anl.gov/neos/solvers/co:concorde/TSP.html Disclaimer: free for academic use
    - 13y ago
beh 13y ago
This is great. Suggestion – add Yelp ratings for destinations. I find myself taking long trips from point A to point B, and always feel like I'm missing out on things along the way. If I knew that the world's best coffee shop (according to Yelp) was just 4 minutes off my route, I'd love to stop.
thisisnotatest 13y ago
Feedback: I clicked on the suggestion "Boston to Providence via McDonalds." Then I decided to try entering the information I wished I'd had on my Labor Day road trip: where was the most convenient place to stop at In'N'Out? But after I typed my California zip code as the origin, before I could start typing my destination, the page went completely unresponsive for 10+ seconds. Apparently it was too eager and immediately started trying to find all the closest McDonalds on the route between my California town and Providence, Rhode Island.
- aptwebapps 13y ago
  Likewise. I did a search in one country, started a new one in a new country and it's still locked up. Couldn't even close the tab. (Chrome, OSX). Really neat app, though!
avalaunch 13y ago
I love this. Make it an app please! I've downloaded multiple apps thinking they'd include this feature and none have. Very useful.
smokestack 13y ago
maps.google.com does this exactly with a few extra clicks: Click "Get directions" button, click the "Add Destination" link, fill in A, B, and C then click the "Did you mean a different..."
joshdotsmith 13y ago
Awesome work on this. Another idea for you: I'd like to put in multiple competing places to see which is optimal. Should I go to Wendy's or Burger King on the way?
- proexploit 13y ago
  Similarly, I often have errands to run and 4-5 locations and it's not immediately obvious which route and order I should go to each of them.
mooneater 13y ago
Awesome! Does this use openstreetmap data, or what data set?
awongh 13y ago
this is great, I was thinking of building something similar, but it didn't seem like the route finding APIs were there at the time. It seems to side step a lot of the problems I'd imagined... a great way to solve this problem I hadn't thought of before. It'd be interesting to see what it would be like for n legs of a journey (for n number of place searches)
rompic 13y ago
We did something similar for vienna last year as a research project (german only). http://www.myits.at/ http://www.myits.at/ http://www.myits.at/mobile http://www.myits.at/mobile

88 points by FriedPickles 13y ago

outericky 13y ago

This is quite neat. Any way to extract the directions once I decide which way point I want to go through?

FriedPickles 13y ago
Thanks! There's a small "Open this route in Google Maps" link that will give directions via the selected location. I'm playing with ideas to make that more prominent.
- excitom 13y ago
  How about when you click one of the suggestions, go ahead and open the route in google maps.

MasterScrat 13y ago

It's not obvious what kind of places you can specify in the "via" field... it would be nice to have autocompletion there. too.

aaronpk 13y ago

If you're using Google Maps and are looking at a route from A to B, you can click any point on the path and drag it to anywhere on the map, and the route will update to pass through the point you selected. Example: http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2835/9667570442_4689c021f7_o.png http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2835/9667570442_4689c021f7_o.p... The only downside is you can't search for the place to stop at, you have to find it on the map.

zeckalpha 13y ago
Until the recent UI overhaul, you could add additional stopping points, and drag to reorder them. It made solving the traveling salesman problem... I mean planning circuitous routes easier.
- graue 13y ago
  "Until the recent UI overhaul"? I still have the feature exactly as you described it in my browser.
  - emhs 13y ago
    This is referring to all the push to use "The New Google Maps". One is not currently obligated to use it, but it's there and being pushed. He seems to be using it.
  - jpatokal 13y ago
    Dragging to change the route is still there, but multiple stops (more than just A & B) are not. http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/2013/08/04/google-maps-multiple-stops-feature-bing-maps-mapquest/2604035/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/2013/08/04/goog...

johnnyo 13y ago

Great idea. I often like to find something "along the way", especially for long road trips. Just a datapoint, trying to find a Boston Market along my route gave me lots of results that weren't a Boston Market. You might need to do a little better matching on the via portion of the data.

DanielStraight 13y ago
On that note, I'd love a Google Maps feature to see duration along the route so I can see where I'll be around lunch and dinner time on a road trip.
dmckeon 13y ago
OP may want to partner with lodging sites - road-weary travelers may not know where they will want to spend the night until late in the day, and the less expensive motel choices are often in smaller towns on their route, so a "search along route" function can be more useful than tools like Around Me with a "search around placename" function that requires iteration over many placenames. I tried "Boston Market" between San Mateo and San Jose, and got 7 results, of which 2 were Boston Market locations, 1 a Harry's Hofbrau, 2 more are probably restaurants, and 2 appear to be unrelated. Trying Boston Market "without quotes" produced many more results, including all the above, and also "Putnam Lexus," "Intel Capital," "eBay," "Aol," and, more tellingly, the "Fish Market" near Fry's in PA. So, users should employ double quotes in multi-word searches, and be selective in choosing from the results.

n00j 13y ago

The classic google maps lets you do this with any number of points. Just the new maps removed this feature: https://www.google.com/maps?saddr=Mineta+San+Jose+International+Airport+(SJC),+1701+Airport+Blvd,+San+Jose,+CA&daddr=San+Mateo,+CA+to:San+Francisco+International+Airport,+San+Francisco,+CA+to:San+Francisco,+CA&hl=en&sll=37.56744,-122.170715&sspn=0.476771,0.686646&geocode=FXs1OgIdAIC7-CE-fvZtP0T6vCmbxbP6w8uPgDE-fvZtP0T6vA%3BFXAqPQId63W1-ClFVanvYJ6PgDGnG8wt9PyO_Q%3BFRT7PQId3Ii0-CE_7c0aV1zypClVVVVVjHePgDE_7c0aV1zypA%3BFVJmQAIdKAe0-CkhAGkAbZqFgDH_rXbwZxNQSg&oq=San+M&mra=ps&t=m&z=11 https://www.google.com/maps?saddr=Mineta+San+Jose+Internatio...

FriedPickles 13y ago
The difference here is Google requires you to give a specific location (e.g., an "instance" of McDonalds), whereas my tool helps you decide which location to stop at when there are many workable options along your route.
uptown 13y ago
It's still baffling to me that they got rid of multiple-stage trip routing. Sure, you can drag the route to add waypoints - but it's nowhere near as precise as providing an address, and gets complicated once you start needing to add three or four stops along a route.

thesash 13y ago

This is super cool! I can't tell you how many times I've been driving between LA and San Diego or LA and San Francisco, and just wanted to find a coffee shop, edible food, or even a gas station. For all the things Google maps is great at, this is not one of them (despite some of the comments here to the contrary). Great work, and if you'd care for some unsolicited advice, a mobile optimized version would make this a killer roadtrip companion, and if you wanted to, you could certainly wrap it in an app and sell it.

erikig 13y ago
Indeed. I would also recommend giving your users a way to reach out (twitter, fb etc). Incidentally, I'm running late to a birthday party and I'm trying to pick up a gift on the way. I couldn't remember the site URL and had to spend some time searching through HN to find it. Thanks anyhow!

sardonicbryan 13y ago

This is one feature that I miss from my Garmin GPS -- ability to set a route, and then search for locations or types of locations along the route.

acowlichenbag 13y ago

http://dpaste.com/1365011/ http://dpaste.com/1365011/ http://redd.it/1lnun3 http://redd.it/1lnun3 I killed christopher 'aempirei' abad with my 5" dick Cowabunga, dude! And now you're going to die wearing that stupid little hat. How does it feel!? You got caught with the seat of your pants flying down and now everyone laughs at your little picopenis on a daily basis. Microchipping a fellow hacker just because you can't sniff out your own? Hilariously inept. Throwing a well-known, contributing veteran of the hack/trollscene into a mental institution just because you had a hangover and forgot to take your klonopin? Over the top. Having a wanton disregard for the history of the internet, the hackscene, trollscene and everything about humanity in general? Get a clue. Your holier-than-thou attitude can screw back off to the 1980's. Yes, folks, christopher 'ambient empire' abad has been bitchtagging and torturing anyone that walks by him just because, well, "I feel like it!" Yes, folks, christopher 'ambient empire' abad fails to understand the first rule of the U.S. system: you can always just buy people off with cash. ' We've been talking to your friends, coworkers and they've been telling us what a lazy, unappreciative little shit you are. Not to mention a sociopath of the lowest order. You won the birth lottery and coasted your way to the top of the U.S. system on a skateboard. Now it's going to be a fun ride when we push your little deck the way back down. You are nothing but a barking little dog who got caught sneaking up the backstairs into the big people's club and now you're being thrown out the window. Your last thought as you realize nothing of value will be lost when your head cracks on the floor of a 12x12 supermax prison cell: "I like to copy from my 1337 civics textbook." Sayanora, sucker! Malaclypse the Younger http://pastie.org/8295259 http://pastie.org/8295259 http://pastebin.com/6CsUg70D http://pastebin.com/6CsUg70D

jamessb 13y ago

This looks really useful. However, it would be nice to give a link to the homepage of each option, especially when the user searched for something vague like "cafe" rather than a specific chain and so might want additional information before deciding which to visit.

Raphmedia 13y ago

Oh! That's awesome once you figure out what it is! You should make it clearer that the big feature is the "via" ! It's presented as an after thought on the website's design, while it is in fact the main feature.

rwhitman 13y ago

This is brilliant. Just such a useful idea. But I would say that this should have been 'mobile first', and would strongly suggest expending effort on mobile experience. This is large and by far something I'd be more likely to use on my phone than anywhere else and its very hard to use on the phone right now

wbobeirne 13y ago
Agreed, or at least a breakpoint at ~720 that makes it stack vertically (i.e. http://cl.ly/image/0m30232n1N1A http://cl.ly/image/0m30232n1N1A)
- FriedPickles 13y ago
  That looks great, thanks. I'll try to make this happen soon.
  - prawn 13y ago
    Maybe also have URLs update automatically for copying and pasting? At the moment, it stays as http://road.li/ http://road.li/ Allowing people to share URLs might increase adoption of the site. You need to make use of your site a habit or people will think "Neat" and then forget about it. It was very fast for me from South Australia. Design needs work, but functionality was decent. Well done.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]

shire 13y ago

I was looking for something like this for so long, very useful!.

homakov 13y ago

Lol, i can just find route A to B and then B to C.

zackbloom 13y ago
With this app, B is a category ("hardware store" or "bank"), rather than a specific location. That's the innovation.
- zeckalpha 13y ago
  Google Maps used to do that.
  - peterwwillis 13y ago
    The old maps still does that, but it does not pick the ones along your route and sort based on shortest trip. In any case, used to is not really useful.
peterwwillis 13y ago
Go from: Columbia, MD to: Hampden, Baltimore, MD via: goodwill It overlays the goodwill stores on your route and then puts the one with the least time out of your way on the top of the results. That'll save you time from having to first figure out which B to use, then do the mapping between it and A and C. ....Granted, the first two goodwill locations no longer exist, but that's Google's fault for not delisting them. This thing seems to be really promising.

brndnmtthws 13y ago

Needs bike directions.

peter_l_downs 13y ago

Needs some debouncing! Other than that, it's awesome.

dxbydt 13y ago

Here's a handy little problem you can solve with road.li - There are 5162 KFC outlets in USA. Say I want to eat a chicken breast at every one of these locations. What's the shortest route that connects all 5162 locations ? Do a topological sort of all kfc locations and run road.li iteratively ie. route from kfc-1 to kfc-3 via kfc-2, kfc-3 to kfc-5 via kfc-4, etc. until kfc-5162 - that should be a bloody interesting map. KFC will fork out hard cash for that sort of thing. Then try Domino's, Taco Bell etc. http://ezlocal.com/blog/post/10-largest-fast-food-chains-in-the-us.aspx http://ezlocal.com/blog/post/10-largest-fast-food-chains-in-...

jffry 13y ago
"What's the shortest route that connects all 5162 locations" AKA Traveling salesman problem? Even with a few hundred cities that would be difficult to find the optimal solution, let alone thousands. You could find a decent to even good solution with other algorithms, though
- Derander 13y ago
  One thing to note about this specific problem: this is an example of the traveling salesman problem with a metric. This makes efficient (good) approximation algorithms a possibility. Many NP-hard approximation algorithms classes teach a 1.5 approx known as the Christofides algorithm. This algorithm is guaranteed to provide an approximate solution that is no worse than 1.5 times the optimal total distance, and often much better.
- pyk 13y ago
  For the ambitious, some of the leading code for solving the TSP to optimality is Concorde (at best it has optimally solved an 85,900 "city" instance): http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/tsp/concorde/downloads/downloads.htm http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/tsp/concorde/downloads/download... or solve/run Concorde on Argonne National Laboratory's server here: http://neos.mcs.anl.gov/neos/solvers/co:concorde/TSP.html http://neos.mcs.anl.gov/neos/solvers/co:concorde/TSP.html Disclaimer: free for academic use
  - 13y ago

beh 13y ago

This is great. Suggestion – add Yelp ratings for destinations. I find myself taking long trips from point A to point B, and always feel like I'm missing out on things along the way. If I knew that the world's best coffee shop (according to Yelp) was just 4 minutes off my route, I'd love to stop.

thisisnotatest 13y ago

Feedback: I clicked on the suggestion "Boston to Providence via McDonalds." Then I decided to try entering the information I wished I'd had on my Labor Day road trip: where was the most convenient place to stop at In'N'Out? But after I typed my California zip code as the origin, before I could start typing my destination, the page went completely unresponsive for 10+ seconds. Apparently it was too eager and immediately started trying to find all the closest McDonalds on the route between my California town and Providence, Rhode Island.

aptwebapps 13y ago
Likewise. I did a search in one country, started a new one in a new country and it's still locked up. Couldn't even close the tab. (Chrome, OSX). Really neat app, though!

avalaunch 13y ago

I love this. Make it an app please! I've downloaded multiple apps thinking they'd include this feature and none have. Very useful.

smokestack 13y ago

maps.google.com does this exactly with a few extra clicks: Click "Get directions" button, click the "Add Destination" link, fill in A, B, and C then click the "Did you mean a different..."

joshdotsmith 13y ago

Awesome work on this. Another idea for you: I'd like to put in multiple competing places to see which is optimal. Should I go to Wendy's or Burger King on the way?

proexploit 13y ago
Similarly, I often have errands to run and 4-5 locations and it's not immediately obvious which route and order I should go to each of them.

mooneater 13y ago

Awesome! Does this use openstreetmap data, or what data set?

awongh 13y ago

this is great, I was thinking of building something similar, but it didn't seem like the route finding APIs were there at the time. It seems to side step a lot of the problems I'd imagined... a great way to solve this problem I hadn't thought of before. It'd be interesting to see what it would be like for n legs of a journey (for n number of place searches)

rompic 13y ago

We did something similar for vienna last year as a research project (german only). http://www.myits.at/ http://www.myits.at/ http://www.myits.at/mobile http://www.myits.at/mobile