Does anyone else find it odd that Google Maps and satellite images, while undeniably cool, are completely lacking any indication of scale?
I’ve been using the service a lot lately and have been very frustrated at the inability to calculate how far things are from each other on the map. There’s nothing on the Help page, either. A map without a scale is just a little bit broken.
Ed Bott 
YES!!! Nail on the head, man!
Why do you want to know how far it is to a lot of different places?
Do you plan to visit all of them? Any of them?
Will the distances to them influence your decision to go or not? Are you walking everywhere you go these days?
Do you just plan to drop the distances into cocktail conversation: “Oh yeah, we visited the Grand Canyon last year, only 176 mile from Phoenix. (North Rim, add 11.4 miles.) Wetook a mule ride into the Canyou for 18.3 miles. (17.6 miles laterally, 0.8 miles vertically.) Little Albert (4 foot-2 inches) saw a rattle snake and pissed his pants (28 Husky).”
You know what’d be cool… if they (or anyone) could figure out a way to make the scalebar into a way to adjust the zoom on the map…
Ron, you’re still hilarious. It’s a shame that PC Computing isn’t around anymore so I can read your stuff every month.
Seriously, though, I usually use Google Maps to find out where something is in a place that I’m not familiar with. If I go on vacation, I can see exactly where my hotel is located. If I zoom out, I can see where the hotel is in relation to local attractions and landmarks, but without a scale, I can’t tell whether it’t a short walk, a short drive, or a half-day trip!
Don’t you ever use the scale on a printed map to get a sense of how far apart things are?
Are you kidding? I don’t leave the house. It’s 27 steps from my desk to the refrigerator, 18 steps to the bathroom, and 43 steps to the bedroom. If I go any farther than that, I need to ask directions, which, of course, I refuse to do. I was once lost for three days in some strange place. Turned out to be our living room.
Seriously, Shirley, you got a nice blog. Thinking about starting one of these myself. Just waiting to see if the idea catches on.
Sim salabim
ron
Ed – have you seen this: http://www.sueandpaul.com/gmapPedometer/
Seems like they get the distance from the latitude and longitude. Someone could use that to hack a scale onto gmaps…