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I miss MapPoint too. I used it as a component of a silly web scraper I built to plan routes for visiting yard sales many summers ago. (My wife and I were really into yard sales at the time.) It would scrape down the local newspapers' classified ads, do some processing on the text, and output an optimal route ending back at home taking into account the varied starting times for the sales. It was easy to get MapPoint to do cool stuff.

QGIS is free/open source and can do a lot of this type of stuff too. More like ArcGIS than MapPoint.

I actually like QGIS more than ArcGIS. It's not without some rough edges, but I found it way easier to use than ArcGIS (which is a bit of a UI disaster, IMO).

Thanks for the intro to QGIS.

Won't happen. Apps with those features get accused of being racist.

https://www.npr.org/2012/01/25/145337346/this-app-was-made-f...

The OP appears to be talking about just mapping demographic datasets, plenty of software does that today and isn't accused of being racist.

The issue you linked to seems different. I agree that the headline is hysterical, but the patent mentions, among other sensible ideas, that it would plot paths factoring in demographic data. Which is just plain weird when you already have crime data available.

Some modern luxury cars have this feature built in. And what’s racist about avoiding dangerous areas?

Please keep the whole "we are being surpressed" bs out of HN.

Well we're definitely being suppressed by you it would seem!

Esri offers an ArcGIS for personal use program. $100/year gets you ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Online, and a bunch of the apps.

I've never used MapPoint so I don't know how it compares - I expect the ArcGIS stuff is more powerful but less usable (for your particular needs) than a more focused solution.

Note: Esri calls isochrones (30 minute drive time) 'service areas' and you have to search for it under 'network analysis'.

I would resurrect Microsoft Streets and Trips. I have never used it, but my father still does, and swears it is better than any online mapping software. Part of the reason I would like to resurrect it is that then I would no longer have to figure out how to install his ancient CD copy of it on whatever netbook he buys every 2-3 years.

Some of the fondest memories I have from childhood involved Microsoft Streets and Tips. Father was a military man, so we were always traveling either for moves, or for some other reason related to his career.

He delegated to me the task of putting together his route using Streets and Tips, a great introduction to navigation, mapping and spatial reasoning. Been a cartography geek (not to mention massive road geek) ever since.

Take the time and create an iso of that and throw it on GDrive/OneDrive/Dropbox.

Will be a lot easier in the future.

> When getting directions, you could designate a number of areas on the map as “avoid area”.

It's noteworthy, because I've only seen this feature in Rolls-Royce navigation in recent times.

OSMAnd and Navigator on Android allow you to "disable" road sections. Not an area feature, but for things like the I-74 Bridge project where construction blockages change sometimes almost weekly, it's a big help to toggle individual blocks/intersections individually.

Not very discoverable, this is the first I read about it.

Fairly sure my parents old TomTom navigation thing had that option too.

It does seem somewhat paranoid. Might be useful to exclude certain routes with an easy interface, but tremendously harmful by seemingly legitimizing the myth of “no-go” areas that has recently become a favorite talking point of the alt-right in my (perfectly safe) country.

There's a neighborhood along my drive home that Waze will often try to navigate through to save a few minutes of driving. This rarely actually saves the time it claims, and is disruptive enough to people living in the neighborhood that entrances to the neighborhood now have signs excluding non-local traffic from entering.

Waze still tries to navigate me through this neighborhood all the time. It makes the app nearly worthless for finding routes home. There are also some other streets I've learned not to trust when Waze tells me to take them home, as they often have much more traffic than predicted. I'd love to be able to block those as well.

Some roads were shut down for construction near where I work a few months ago. Uber and Lyft don't seem to take data like that into account, so I had a hell of a time getting home from work - I'd have two or three canceled rides before I got one that happened not to be routed through any closed roads.

I believe the entire use case you present was already acknowledged in the comment you are replying to, I. e. the “easy interface” to “exclude certain routes”.

The comment I was replying said that the functionality might be useful. This does not acknowledge any particular use case for the functionality, and leaves open the possibility that it might not be useful. Someone who isn't sure whether this functionality has legitimate uses or not probably isn't aware of what the legitimate uses are.

The parent is providing an alternative reason for avoiding particular neighborhoods.

Also as votes are hidden here me-toos provide useful info.

I work with many foreign women who have no idea the safe and dangerous areas of our city. You might consider from their point of view the value of such a service, rather than worrying about more meta-tribal political battles. Some areas of my city have higher harassment and crime rates, as a man this is less concerning for me, but it's something many women need to take much more seriously.

If you find people staying safe to be tremendously harmful to your politics it might be time to reconsider your viewpoints.

Well if you live in sleepy Luxembourg you'll probably not need that feature, but other countries might need it.

https://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/05/americas/brazil-wrong-dir...

The ability to avoid an area is a useful and apolitical capability. I often want my satnav to exclude driving through cities as it's more relaxing and often faster to drive around, and when there are roadworks or large scale events it is really helpful to be able to exclude them.

Not only this is not recent, it has nothing to do with politics or ideology, at all.

No-go zones have been used all over the world for decades.

Not all over the world. I'm in Seattle and I'd probably have to drive to Chicago or Tijuana to find a place I wouldn't feel safe driving through.

I don't disagree about "no-go" areas, but since the comment to which you replied didn't mention those, and your own comment set off a sprawl of off-topic comments, I wish you hadn't written this here.

I believe the mention of Rolls-Royce, in association with “avoid area” may (legitimately) create the impression that this is a feature for pearl-clutching snobs afraid of “dark people” coming for their women and other belongings.

It’s perfectly okay to consider this and still say the feature’s benefits are overwhelming. But the rabiat outburst of denying even the possibility is an indictment of the posters more than the suggestion that triggered them.

Isochrone is the word you're looking for, for the distance time feature. Openrouteservice can do that, based on osm data (of course; what other source could they use really).