Every company needs a map to their offices, right?

Wanted to post about Jakob Nielsen's complaint about URLs being longer than 75 characters. I was going to tell my tale about having to hunt for a web-based map that I need to link to so people can find our company. Let me start there. When upgrading the site, I wanted to ensure the map link was up-to-date (I think it was wrong due to server changes by the mapping service). But the new URL wouldn't be accepted by FrontPage because it was over 255 characters! I haven't tried that link in Dreamweaver, but I may have to.

My elegant solution was to link to another mapping service MapsOnUs, which had a short URL for the map page I generated. But in checking this morning, I find that the URL includes a user code, that it won't let everyone use. My cookie for this user code must have expired because now I found that I get dumped on a generic "enter address here" form. Crap!

As I study their poor website, I find that as a business, I have to subscribe to fancy mapping services starting at 2K a year, or pretend that I am a non-commercial site, in which I can link to their site. No middle ground.

And the MapsOnUs site really sucks, too. The "business svcs" link on their home page drops you to a PDF file. Their linking instructions are long and complicated. And to top it all off their "contact us" page gives text directions to their offices, but no link to a map!