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FC NOW: The Fast Company Weblog

March 31, 2005

An Internet Rant

Can I urge in the strongest possible terms that somebody over at Roadside America get off their butt and start hooking up their items to a map? It's a friggin' travel site, for goodness sake. Even Jane and Michael Stern, whose primary preoccupation is food, do a much better job of telling you where the sites they recommend are. That is to say, they actually do the job. Over at Roadside America, they don't bother at all. Their only nod to geography is the "roadtrip" concept, such as the boring tour, and listing by states. But it's so impractical as to be worthless.

These guys would have the premier website in the country on oddball attractions if they'd get off their butts and hook up the sites to a map. Their book would've been a lot more interesting if anybody thought they could actually use it on a trip. How hard would that be? Not very. It might have been hard when they started a decade or so ago. But not now. Haven't they heard of Yahoo maps? GPS? Even if they put little numbers on a paper map and posted them once or twice a year. Anything.

What's set me off today is that they have a "new feature": hotel and motel listings. Ok fine. They're not necessarily cool or freaky or ironic hotels, but fine. But they can't even do that right because they insist on listing them in long list of towns. Do these guys actually travel at all? With the land grab seemingly on again, can someone please buy these map-phobes out?

Okay, I feel better now that my morning rant is out of the way. Time for yours. What bugs you about the Net? What could be better?