AAA Offers Free Map Directions Online

July 16, 2004 -- In this week's Cybershake, we look at how AAA wants to compete with free online direction sites such as Mapquest. Plus, we take a look at a service that promises to immortalize your thoughts by sending them to the highest places.

Mapping Out Road Trips Online

For about 100 years, AAA has been helping families plan vacations and other trips with its map packages called TripTiks, which are free to members. The planners contain foldout maps customized to show only the route each member should take from his specific origin point to his particular vacation destination.

Then along came the Internet and upstart online mapping sites such as Mapquest, Mappoint and others that can automatically figure out driving routes for free — with no membership required.

AAA's Jan Coyne says the auto club has been fighting back with its Internet TripTik. It provides online the same customized trip planning maps and advice that AAA offers locally at thousands of club offices nationwide. But now, AAA is spreading its tech wings a bit further.

At AAAmaps.com, creating a custom map for family vacations or personal road trips isn't just limited to AAA members. Anyone can log in and use the AAA map engine to find the best routes to travel.

Coyne says the site functions just like those free mapping sites, but with a distinction.

"We view those as [competitive] sites which give very good driving directions," says Coyne. But "[AAAmaps.com] really leverages our hundred years of experience in the mapping and routing and travel information industry."

AAA will continue to operate its Internet TripTik as a members-only Web site. The difference between that online service and the new AAAmaps site are the level of information and services.

AAA members on the TripTik site, for example, can plan out complex travel itineraries with maps that have up to 12 points of interest. So planning a road trip from New York to Chicago with stopovers at Hershey Park, Pa., and Cleveland can be done with one map search. AAAmaps.com users are limited to one stopover between their origin and destination.

Members will also have access to information about every single hotel, restaurant and attraction along their specific route or order the complete AAA TourBook that's related to their particular destination.

— Jim Hickey, ABC News

Space-Age Messages in Bottles

Want to get something off your chest? Or do you have a message that you think should be proclaimed to the highest heavens for all eternity? Paul Forte has established a Web site called EndlessEchoes.com just for you.

"[It] allows users to broadcast any message that they'd like into space where it will travel at the speed of light for all eternity," he says.

How it works is fairly simple. Users pay $24.95 for a 14-digit code and a toll-free telephone number they can call from any phone. The line is connected to "voice preparation center," where users punch in the code to access a massive radio tower in Pennsylvania.

Once users are connected, "They state their message and then once they're done they press the [No.] 3 button [on the dialpad] and the message, 30 seconds later will be broadcast up into space," Forte says.

Messages can be up to one minute in length and contain anything a person may want to say.

"We don't listen to the messages," says Forte. "They're private and we respect that."

And since these messages are broadcast out into space, they can literally go on forever.

"Even at the speed of light, it would take seven and a half years for the messages to get to the closest star," he says.

For an additional $9, EndlessEchoes will burn the message onto a CD and send it back to the caller.

Forte says he came up with the idea as a way to say "goodbye" to his deceased grandfather. And he says based on customer testimonials, many others have used his service for those kind of personal messages.

"Lot of people never had a chance to say goodbye [to loved ones]," says Forte. "And there are an awful lot of 'I Love Yous' sent this way. And these are 'I love yous' that you can't take back."

— Larry Jacobs, ABC News

Cybershake is produced for ABCNEWS Radio by Andrea J. Smith.