No, this is not a post about gpsAssassin (though that would have been a good and appropriate title).

I am talking about Google Maps.

Back in 2006 I first saw Google Maps on a phone with GPS. At the time I had a Sprint a900 and had to do a little hackery to get it to work. When I started traveling for work in 2006 I switched to a Palm Treo and then a Blackberry. Both of these had Google Maps, but the Palm didn’t have GPS. Again, with the backberry I had to unlock the phone in order to get Google Maps working, but once I did I found it to be one of the most freeing pieces of software ever.

I quickly started using Google Maps for much more than just seeing where I was. It quickly became my #1 tool for finding business phone numbers, locations and even websites. By using Google Maps in conjunction to my current location I was able to search for businesses and get location specific results. A great example is finding a nearby bank. I could have called the bank or gone to their website and used the branch locator, or I could just pull up Google Maps and type “suntrust