Downloading a Map on Your iPod
Apple Inc. grabbed headlines this week by unveiling its annual showstopper – the sleek, features-packed iPhone – and by dropping “Computer” from its name.
The iPhone is a mobile phone, a wide-screen iPod on which you can watch movies with the touch of your finger, and a communications device that lets you do e-mail and browse the Internet – and download maps.
Now you can download a METRO rail map directly to your iPhone by going to our Web site - and you'll see it instantly.
For those of you with iPods, you’ll have to connect it to your computer first, then download. Click here for more instructions.
We’ve had the downloadable map on our Web site since November 7 – and so far, it’s a hit.
In fact, in the first month, we had 1,081 downloads, and by the end of December 2,672 downloads. Right now, the map is downloadable 
on the video and photo iPod models, but not the Nano.
METRO president and chief executive Frank Wilson found out the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District was downloading maps, and was sold on the idea. Our IT and marketing departments worked for about five months, creating an iPod-ready map.
“Most of the laborious part was to transform the existing maps, which were in Adobe Illustrator format – into just regular pictures files for the iPod to read,” said Del Balbin, METRO’s marketing director.
The challenge for Web designer Jesse Quintanilla was the small iPod screen. “It has a specific grid to it – you have to restructure the map to fit into that view – six by four squares,” said Quintanilla, who’s worked as a graphic and Web designer for a dozen years.
Quintanilla started with METRO’s system map, but it was too big and didn’t fit on the iPod screen. By the time you scrolled from left to right to get from Point A to Point B, you’d be lost.
“We needed to go to a smaller map and something that was more user-friendly,” said Quintanilla. Chris Smoke, our go-to IT guy, suggested rotating the map from a horizontal to vertical position – and voila! A 90-degree rotation created the illusion of moving along the rail line from top to bottom.
San Francisco’s BART has had downloadable maps, schedules and fares for the iPod since September 2005 and downloadable maps for Palm Pilots since 1999.
“They’re very popular,” said Linton Johnson, chief spokesperson at BART. “Any time there’s a change, we send out updates. I see people using it all the time in the stations.”
Washington, D.C.’s mass transit system also has downloadable maps.
William Bright, a New York Web designer, figured out how to download the New York subway map onto his iPod, decided to share it with the world and has since allowed others to submit maps. So far you can find 29 subway maps – from Melbourne to Milan and Boston to Berlin - at iSubwayMaps.com.
University of Sussex lecturer Dr. Michael Bull , an expert on the social impact of stereo devices and the author of “Sounding Out the City”, is writing a book about how and why people are using the iPod in their every day lives.
“People like to control their environment, and the iPod is the perfect way to manage your experience,” Bull told Wired News in an interview.
If you’ve downloaded our Red Line map, tell us how it’s working and if it’s made your life in the city a little easier to manage.
