Subway Maps for Your iPod
The self guided mp3 audio 
walking tours at walki-talki.com could have been the first travel application for the iPod, but William Bright beat us to it by creating iSubwayMaps. “Little Bill” created this site as soon as the photo-capable iPods were introduced. He surmised, quite correctly, that it would be useful to have subway maps on the iPod. So, he painstakingly adapted high resolution photos of various subway systems around the world to be used on the iPod.
Why painstakingly? Because the documents had to be broken up into pieces so that you could zoom in on a particular part of the system when you need to do so. The result is quite nice, and by now, the selection of maps is large enough that you are almost guaranteed to find the map you want.
But, just in case you can’t find the map you want, go to amadeus.net There you will almost certainly find the map you need. amadeus.net provides maps in pdf and Micro$oft Word formats, only. Therefore, you will have either to figure out how to view pdfs with your iPod or other media player or to take a printout with you. 
In due time, I hope to cite enough resources to allow you to take everything you need on your iPod. For now, you have walking tours and subway maps, and that may suffice.
Payam
PS If you read the posts on the isubwaymaps.com home page, you will learn that New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority prohibited Bill from using the MTA’s official map. So, he had to create one from scratch in order to avoid their alleged copyright violation. Bill also had to change the name of the site because Apple objected to the word “iPod” in the site’s original name. It is always interesting how progress is achieved despite the best efforts of large business and big government. PNM
