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London Tube, now for iPhone!
November 13, 2007
Just a quick update, the London iPhone map is now available.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
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Yahoo! Mail + PDF = Happy Map!
July 08, 2007
So after many comments, I’ve been tinkering with making a downloadable PDF version of the New York City map which will allow you to pan and zoom and I can announce that it’s been a resounding success! There are, however, two small catches.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.
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iPhone Maps Are Here!
July 07, 2007
. . . well, so far just the New York City map. (I don’t mind announcing the new design of the site too.)
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
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Moscow! New Map!
July 03, 2006
Many thanks to the following people who have donated over the last two days, Nicholas, Jesse, M A, and John for the donations thus far! It’s really helping towards the new iPod. As per Jesse’s request, here’s a brand new map, not a new size. This is our 24th map! Moscow is now up! — Little Bill -
Stolen! (and London 5G)
June 30, 2006
So. Last weekend I was at a pizzeria with my girlfriend when — in a nutshell — my iPod 5G, Etymotic ER-6i Isolator Earbuds (recommended!), Digital Camera and Nintendo DS Lite (with the new Super Mario Bros. and Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap were stolen from my bag.
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.
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Back up and running
June 07, 2006
Most people may not have noticed, but over the weekend iSubwayMaps.com went down, was moved to a new webhost and brought back online here. If all went well you didn’t notice. If you did notice, I apologize for the downtime. I tried to minimize it, and keep all maps up and online.
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
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Crash of the Hard Drives
March 05, 2006
Quick mini-announcement:
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 -
Tokyo Metro Map 5G Now Available
November 02, 2005
Many thanks to Jerry Jones for providing the site with 5G maps for the Tokyo Metro! As with the 4G map, this one is available in English, Japanese and Korean.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!
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All quiet on the iSubway front…
October 28, 2005
It’s been quiet this past week, I’ve been out sick from work a few days and have been taking it easy but felt I owe you guys an update. Current plan of action is NOT to add any new maps yet. I want to go through the maps that we’ve already got on the site and make sure they’re all available for the 4G, 5G and Nano iPods. Once we’re all caught up, and this will take a while unless I can get more volunteers, We’ll go forward on getting more cities.
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
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Chicago Is Back! (New York Map Updated, too)
October 23, 2005
So I’ve put up the official Chicago Transit Authority Map. It’s designed directly from source files given to me from the wonderful CTA and is totally accurate. The license was given to me for free and I would like to stress once again that Chicago, along with Washington DC, are setting a wonderful precedent which I hope other cities will follow in times to come.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
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Press
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Agencies would do well to find ways to work with folks with good ideas instead of just turning loose the lawyers.
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Might the MTA have overreacted and in doing so deprived commuters of something useful?
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The man's trying to do good in the world.