The main area in the MapQuest offices has comfortable chairs, a ping-pong table, a kitchen and snack area. (Joanna B Pinneo/For The Washington Post)
DENVER — In the far corner of a typical-looking tech office, past the ping-pong table and medicine balls, past the whiteboard covered with aspirational Post-it notes, there’s an old walk-in storage closet filled with reminders of a different era.
In there, the old red MapQuest logo is everywhere: on giveaway knickknacks, on little tech gadgets, tokens from a time when MapQuest had nearly 100 percent of the online mapping market. MapQuest is even included in a dusty coffee-table book titled “America’s Best Brands,” along with Coca-Cola and Crest. The book was published in 2005.
“The question we still get asked a lot,” said Brian McMahon, MapQuest’s top executive, is: “Does MapQuest still exist?”
It does — but in much smaller form. MapQuest is the rare American company that changed the world and then gradually became uncool, almost forgotten, in less than a generation. They are part of tech world lore — companies such as MySpace, which exists as a music network, and America Online, which became AOL, bought MapQuest for $1.1 billion in 1999 and then was acquired itself by Verizon this month for only about four times that amount.
Most Americans long ago stopped using MapQuest’s services, those turn-by-turn directions often printed out from the home desktop and scattered around the passenger seat of a car. In recent years, eclipsed by Google Maps and other swifter and better-funded competitors, MapQuest has sought a second life.
“There are very few companies that can come back from that zombie-status,” said Jan Dawson, chief analyst at Jackdaw, a technology research firm.
The question is whether a tech company, leveraging a familiar name, can return from that brink. In MapQuest’s case, that means reminding people that it still exists, revamping its image and ultimately rebuilding its technology from the ground up. The journey is long. For every 20 smartphone users who have Google Maps, one has MapQuest’s mobile app.
A few companies have made it back from near-dead status. Apple is the classic example. AOL, after a disastrous merger with Time Warner and consumers’ shift to broadband, found a second act growing sideways into the less revolutionary territory of ad technology.
In a series of interviews at MapQuest headquarters, MapQuest’s designers and product managers said the company hit a low two years ago. Its maps were bad — simplistic grids outclassed by vivid and detailed landscapes produced by Google Maps and other competitors.
More troubling, using MapQuest was a headache. On Google Maps, one could type in “W-H-O…” and a series of grocery stores would pop up in the search field. In MapQuest, one had to type in, “Whole Foods, Denver, CO.”
“There had been a lack of innovation,” said McMahon, who took over in late 2012 as MapQuest’s top executive after more than a decade with AOL. During that time, he rose through the ranks, managing business development for, among other things, the company’s mail and instant messaging services.
More recently, MapQuest briefly debated changing its name, starting over with a new identity. But it decided not to, with good reason: Even now, some 40 million people — almost all of them in North America — use MapQuest at least once a month. And unlike Google Maps or Apple Maps, whose apps come pre-installed on Android or iOS smartphones, MapQuest had users who were actively seeking it out, searching for it in an app store or typing in the URL. Some analysts say those people are less valuable Internet users — slow adapters who are set in their ways — but McMahon said it’s “tough to give up” on them.
Though MapQuest still has the second-highest share of the domestic market in online mapping, about 25 percent, it’s a minnow when it comes to resources. Google dispatches cars across the world to map it; MapQuest’s mapping detail is limited beyond North America. Nokia’s competing Here mapping system has 6,000 employees; MapQuest has 100.
MapQuest began in 1967 as the cartographic services division of R.R. Donnelley & Sons, a commercial printing company, and it produced road maps for gas stations. The division became more computer-oriented and was spun off in the early-1990s as an independent company, backed by some venture capitalists, under the name of the GeoSystems Global Corp. In 1996, it launched MapQuest.com.
Even in the darkest times, MapQuest made money. It kept a bare-bones staff, sold technology and welcomed in-your-face ads. On its site now, one need only click a sponsored button to find any nearby Holiday Inn, Best Western or Comfort Inn. MapQuest also found ways, partnering with businesses, to burrow into less-noticed parts of the Internet. Want to find the closest Papa John’s? Plug your Zip code into the pizza company’s Web site and a MapQuest map will pop up.
MapQuest does not disclose its earnings, but McMahon said the company is profitable, with “multiple lucrative revenue streams.” The challenge, for MapQuest, is taking that business model and using it to fund an operation that now fancies itself a quasi start-up.
The goal of the rebranding is relatively modest: providing good, usable maps. Google Maps may try to be a platform that pulls together your whole life — syncing with your calendar and pulling flight times and restaurant reservations from your e-mail. But MapQuest offers online mapping for people who don’t want to be tracked, who don’t mind having to ask when they want a little extra information. Click on a restaurant, MapQuest will show you a Yelp review. Click on a hotel, you’ll find content from Priceline.
It’s unclear if this is enough to win people back. “Fifteen years ago, if you said I’m going to get directions, you’d say, ‘Let me MapQuest the directions,’” said Bill Dollins, a geospatial consultant who has done advanced mapping for the federal government. “And nobody says that now. It’s seen as something old.”
Since then, some of the planet’s largest tech companies — Apple, Amazon, Nokia, Microsoft — have also turned into mapmakers, in part looking for a way to gather better geolocation information from users. Uber recently placed a $3 billion bid for Nokia’s mapping division, seeking in-house technology for its ride-hailing service. According to tech experts, digital mapping has a future in everything from driverless cars to drone deliveries.
Unlike Nokia and Google, MapQuest doesn’t own the little bits of core data that create a digital map; it buys that information from a Dutch company, TomTom. MapQuest is competing with Google and Nokia only on the next step: What is done with that data and how it’s stitched together into something people can use.
Those at MapQuest are unsure about the impact of the Verizon purchase and say it isn’t changing their business model, although, conceivably, Verizon could create a higher profile for MapQuest’s app. In an earnings call last November, Tim Armstrong, AOL’s chief executive, called MapQuest a “very strategic asset.”
“I think it’s one of those assets that people probably don’t pay that close attention to overall,” Armstrong said, “but we do internally.” He added, “And you’ve seen us roll out probably more new products in the last year on MapQuest than the prior 10 years on MapQuest.”
Travel and location symbols and exotic location names are the first things you see when you step off the elevator to the third floor offices of MapQuest in Denverr. (Joanna B Pinneo/For The Washington Post)
Brad Maglinger, MapQuest’s chief marketing officer, compared the reboot that began two years ago to razing a house rather than remodeling. Many tech workers were hired.
The company also began a low-budget tour of America — the MapQuest Listening Tour, product vice president Nate Abbott called it. A handful of MapQuest employees met with users in cities from the District to Los Angeles, watching how they used the app and the Web site. Other employees walked the streets of downtown Denver, ducking into coffee shops and offering a $5 gift card to everyone who’d sit down and share their user experiences.
Those conversations — though unscientific — helped give the company a set of common-sense ways to improve the experience, MapQuest officials said. One woman, for instance, said she worried about driving the wrong way down a one-way street, and MapQuest realized there was a better way to mark such roads. When the mobile app was introduced in late-2013, one-way streets were more easily identifiable, marked like the vanes of a bird feather.
“It’s a quick, small change,” Abbott said.
Of course, it’s also noteworthy what MapQuest is not doing. Its maps have no 3D views of buildings, no put-you-there images of streets. In its digital cities, buildings are traced in outline but aren’t marked “Starbucks” or “White House.”
The mobile app is now vector-based (which keeps images crisp when re-sized) and has received good reviews from tech outlets. But its Web page, viewed on laptops or desktops, hasn’t been updated and looks much as it did six years ago. During a recent demo at the MapQuest office, SuAnne Hall, the company’s design director, groaned lightly as she used her MacBook to chart directions for driving from Denver to Los Angeles — 16 hours and 33 minutes. She noted one of the features she likes: One can easily locate the coffee shops or hotels along the way. But the widgets — or user interfaces — are clunky, she said, and the map is grainy.
MapQuest’s tech team has been working for more than a year on a new Web version. It will be ready in the next few months.
“This map,” Hall said, “still needs a lot of love.”
Sistema de Bloqueio de Ligações de Telemarketing do Ministério Público de Minas Gerais. Eu me cadastrei. Pena que demora 30 dias para começar a funcionar.
Todo consumidor em Minas Gerais pode escolher se deseja ou não receber ligação telefônica ou SMS que ofereça produtos e serviços. Caso não queira recebê-los, o consumidor pode cadastrar números de telefones fixo ou móvel no Sistema de Bloqueio de Telemarketing por Ligação e SMS, conhecido como Lista Antimarketing.
Esse é um serviço gratuito gerenciado pelo Programa Estadual de Proteção e Defesa do Consumidor (Procon-MG), conforme determinação da Lei Estadual 19.095/2010.
Em 30 dias, contados do cadastro no sistema, todo fornecedor estará proibido de promover omarketing direto ativo para os números de telefone cadastrados, com exceção de entidades filantrópicas e de empresas que sejam expressamente autorizadas pelo consumidor. No entanto, apenas números de telefone registrados em Minas Gerais podem ser cadastrados na Lista Antimarketing.
Considera-se marketing direto ativo a estratégia de vendas consistente em estabelecer interação entre fornecedor e consumidor, independentemente da vontade deste, com o objetivo de oferecer produtos ou serviços.
O cadastro no sistema de bloqueio de telemarketing é válido por um ano. Ao final desse período, o sistema enviará alerta para o e-mail do usuário informando a necessidade de revalidação do cadastro.
O consumidor que efetuar o cadastro de um telefone no sistema deverá cancelá-lo imediatamente se deixar de ser o titular da linha.
Leia mais sobre a normalização do sistema de bloqueio de telemarketing:
Decreto Estadual N.º 46.587, de 26/08/2014 - Dispõe sobre a implementação da lista pública para registro dos consumidores que não desejam receber ofertas comerciais por meio de marketing direto ativo.
Resolução PGJ N.º 83/2014, de 18/09/2014 - Dispõe sobre a implementação, o gerenciamento e a manutenção da lista identificada como "Lista Antimarketing".
Advocatus Diaboli writes: A newly released top secret document reveals that the NSA planned to hijack Google and Samsung app stores to plant spying software on smartphones. The report on the surveillance project, dubbed "IRRITANT HORN," shows the U.S. and its "Five Eyes" alliance: Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia, were looking at ways to hack smartphones and spy on users. According to The Intercept: "The top-secret document, obtained from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, was published Wednesday by CBC News in collaboration with The Intercept. The document outlines a series of tactics that the NSA and its counterparts in the Five Eyes were working on during workshops held in Australia and Canada between November 2011 and February 2012."
An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla has announced plans to launch a feature called "Suggested Tiles," which will provide sponsored recommendations to visit certain websites when other websites show up in the user's new tab page. The tiles will begin to show up for beta channel users next week, and the company is asking for feedback. For testing purposes, users will only see Suggested Tiles "promoting Firefox for Android, Firefox Marketplace, and other Mozilla causes." It's not yet known what websites will show up on the tiles when the feature launches later this summer. The company says, "With Suggested Tiles, we want to show the world that it is possible to do relevant advertising and content recommendations while still respecting users’ privacy and giving them control over their data."
A dad has been incorrectly accused of being a pedophile on Facebook by a woman he doesn't know. The woman is now mortified and begging for forgiveness. Both say they are "devastated" by the events surrounding the misunderstanding.
The moral of the story: Don't post stupid things on social media.
The whole debacle began innocently enough with a dad taking a "daggy" selfie of himself with a Darth Vader cut-out on Wednesday at a Melbourne shopping centre. It was his first selfie and he planned to send it to his children who are Star Wars fans. There happened to be some children nearby, who he spoke to — simply saying he wouldn't be a moment if they also wanted to take a photo.
The selfie.
Image: Facebook
The mother of the children saw the man talking to them, took his photo and posted it on her Facebook account, calling him a "creep." In the hours that followed, the post quickly started to travel around the Internet and he became the target of vile Facebook trolls.
According to the Knox Leader, the man who has chosen to remain anonymous, became alerted to the issue when his phone started ringing constantly during a business meeting. Friends of the man had noticed his photo being shared online.
The dad headed straight to police, where they verified his story and cleared him of any wrongdoing. He told the publication on Friday he is absolutely embarrassed and devastated by what has happened. “I fully expected to come home to find my house torched or something worse,” he said.
He called on people to get their facts straight and rely on news organisations, rather than social media, for correct information to prevent a similar situation occurring again.
"People need to get their information from proper news sources rather than rely on drama queens who share things without thought on Facebook,” he said.
According to the Daily Mail, the man has been considering his legal options after the post was shared more than 20,000 times. 'We're a very strong, community-minded family and we've never had any issue with any form of impropriety and all of a sudden my name is smeared," he said. "I would like people to understand the perils of social media, especially unreliable and uncorroborated information."
The Facebook post by the mother.
Image: Facebook
Now the volatile nature of social media has come back to haunt the woman who posted the incorrect photo. She said she has received death threats after making a "stupid" mistake. She apologised for the pain she has caused the father and urged people with concerns about strangers to go to police, instead of using social media.
“I just need to say sorry ... for not letting [the police] do their job, and putting my concerns on social media,” she told the Knox Leader on Monday. “I should not have put any picture on any social media, even if I thought it was private ... One thousand times over I wish I could just take it back."
The mother said she was shocked at the speed the post was shared, and urged others to think before they post. "I think the biggest lesson out of it all is not to post anything that could hurt anybody on any media."
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.
Taking another significant step in building digital and video
platforms to drive future growth, Verizon Communications Inc.
today announced the signing of an agreement to purchase AOL Inc.
for $50 per share — an estimated total value of approximately
$4.4 billion.
Consider how far AOL has fallen, and how much the media world has changed: in 2000 AOL acquired Time Warner for $182 billion, creating a post-merger company then valued at over $350 billion.
Get a rat and put it in a cage and give it two water bottles. One is just water, and one is water laced with either heroin or cocaine. If you do that, the rat will almost always prefer the drugged water and almost always kill itself very quickly, right, within a couple of weeks. So there you go. It’s our theory of addiction.
Bruce comes along in the ’70s and said, “Well, hang on a minute. We’re putting the rat in an empty cage. It’s got nothing to do. Let’s try this a little bit differently.” So Bruce built Rat Park, and Rat Park is like heaven for rats. Everything your rat about town could want, it’s got in Rat Park. It’s got lovely food. It’s got sex. It’s got loads of other rats to be friends with. It’s got loads of colored balls. Everything your rat could want. And they’ve got both the water bottles. They’ve got the drugged water and the normal water. But here’s the fascinating thing. In Rat Park, they don’t like the drugged water. They hardly use any of it. None of them ever overdose. None of them ever use in a way that looks like compulsion or addiction. There’s a really interesting human example I’ll tell you about in a minute, but what Bruce says is that shows that both the right-wing and left-wing theories of addiction are wrong. So the right-wing theory is it’s a moral failing, you’re a hedonist, you party too hard. The left-wing theory is it takes you over, your brain is hijacked. Bruce says it’s not your morality, it’s not your brain; it’s your cage. Addiction is largely an adaptation to your environment.
[…]
We’ve created a society where significant numbers of our fellow citizens cannot bear to be present in their lives without being drugged, right? We’ve created a hyperconsumerist, hyperindividualist, isolated world that is, for a lot of people, much more like that first cage than it is like the bonded, connected cages that we need.
The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection. And our whole society, the engine of our society, is geared towards making us connect with things. If you are not a good consumer capitalist citizen, if you’re spending your time bonding with the people around you and not buying stuff—in fact, we are trained from a very young age to focus our hopes and our dreams and our ambitions on things we can buy and consume. And drug addiction is really a subset of that.
As a recovering addict this is an interesting read. I’m constantly battling right-wingers telling me it’s my fault and always being told by doctors it’s in my nature. But hearing this about my environment makes a lot of sense, I fell into addiction in a very bad time in my life when I was very isolated, and most of the addicts I know are the same. Addiction is definitely related to depression and this is affected by environment. I like this article.
Bruce Alexander did the Rat Park experiments in the seventies. I am kind of horrified and outraged that I’ve heard about the empty-cage rat experiments but never once about his.
An Oregon mom has filed a complaint against United Airlines after it removed her and family from a flight because it said her 15-year-old daughter, who has autism, had become "disruptive."
The woman, Dr. Donna Beegle of Tigard, Oregon — a prominent advocate for anti-poverty programs who frequently consults with state and federal government agencies — was returning home with her family from a trip to Walt Disney World last week when her daughter Juliette became agitated because she was hungry during a layover in Houston, Beegle said.
Beegle said that after she persuaded a flight attendant to give her daughter some hot food, Juliette had calmed down and was quietly watching a movie when "the next thing we hear is we're doing an emergency landing in Salt Lake City," Beegle told NBC station KGW of Portland, Oregon. "We have a passenger on board with a behavior issue."
Police officers boarded the plane and escorted the entire family off, Beegle told the station. "As a mom it ripped my heart out," she said. "I was shaking."
The incident was recorded in a video posted to YouTube that Beegle authenticated. In the video, a passenger can be heard remarking, "It's ridiculous." Another says, "That's going to be a lawsuit."
"Juliette has flown since she was six months," Beegle said in a long account of the incident that she posted to Facebook. "She has been to five countries, 24 states and we have never experienced anything like this."
Beegle called the incident "a sheer case of ignorance," adding: "Prejudice, ignorance and mistreatment are all too common toward people facing poverty," she added. "The parallels between special needs and poverty are striking in that both are causes for judgement, misunderstanding and mistreatment."
In a statement, United said its "crew made the best decision for the safety and comfort of all of our customers and elected to divert to Salt Lake City after the situation became disruptive."
Beegle said Saturday that she has filed official complaints with United and the Federal Aviation Administration and that she plans to sue the airline — not for money, "but rather to ask that airline staff receive training."
KGW-TV
Dr. Donna Beegle reviews the complaint she filed with the Federal Aviation Administration.
KGW-TV