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Whoa, automatic hand drawn maps like they should be.

Combine this with Maneesh's algorithm for scaling map distances, good speech synthesis and maybe MeLo-powered personal landmark detection and computers can really get into the business of giving people directions in ways that are useful and comfortable for them, but done in a way that's faster, more reliable and with less work than asking someone for help.

I used turn-by-turn directions for the first time during this wedding trip (thanks to my Google phone and an audio cable that plugged into the car stereo) and was really, really impressed. I had never really trusted those before, but it consistently worked well and seemed to be getting pretty good at telling me in a natural way (waiting until after I made a turn and then telling me how long I'd be on that road, for example).

Also, did you guys see that article about the Watson question-answering service from IBM? After all this time, are computers finally starting to work alongside people the way we've always wanted them to? We live in exciting times!

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Napkin sketch view of online maps [kottke.org]

Bing Maps has a neat napkin sketch view.

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