iPod Directions: Driving directions on your iPod

I would call iPod Directions a cool Yahoo! Maps/iPod mash-up, but it's not really a mash-up at all. It's a web service that fetches directions from Yahoo! Maps and gives them to you as a ZIP file full of images to drop into your iTunes photo folder. It's both simple and ingenius, because all it does is grab the images and text directly from Yahoo! Maps' turn-by-turn directions, convert the text into images, and serve them to you together in a format perfect for a slideshow on your iPod. Of course, this comes with the same caveat as plain old Yahoo!/Google/whatever Maps, i.e you have to remember to get directions before you leave. The major advantage of having them on your iPod rather instead of printing them out is, I suppose compactness. If you're going on a road trip with a dozen out-of-the-way stops, carrying your iPod (which you carry around anyway) might be preferable to a sheaf of printouts. Now, what would really be cool would be if it did speech synthesis and gave you an MP3 so you didn't have to look at the iPod while driving.

Tags: directions, ipod, mapping, yahoo, yahoomaps