With Google Maps at my disposal, I have no need for a global positioning system (GPS) device. I was thinking dreaming about getting myself a GPS enabled cellphone but since I discovered what Google Maps can do, I can just forget about GPS. GPS may have its own advantages over Google Maps but what Google Maps have what I need and therefore, that is good enough for me.

Using Google Maps for the first time: I had the opportunity to use it for the first time when I had to visit a client in Batu Pahat, Johor last Wednesday. They have shifted to a new office that was quite a distance away from the old place. I am not at all familiar with Batu Pahat and therefore, it would be an opportunity to put Google Maps to the test.

It is simple to use. I have already saved my home location and all I need to do is get the direction to my client’s place by by entering his new street address. Once that is done, I was given a map and a detail instruction to follow. My client had advised me to take the Ayer Hitam exit since that would make my finding the new place easier and due to that, I just need to drag the exit suggested from Yong Peng to Ayer Hitam and Google Maps plotted the new directions for me to follow. It was as simple as that.

On top of that, I was given the estimated mileage to the location as well as the estimated time that the trip would take. With that I was able to provide my ETA to my clients and it was quite accurate. Based on the ETA given, the average speed calculated was about 70 km/h. That must be the combination of highways and normal road used. Anyway, I managed to find my clients new place easily with the help of Google Maps.

Google Maps vs GPS: During lunch, I told my client that I found my way using Google Maps. He has a GPS enabled Blackberry cellphone and I have Google Maps loaded to my cellphone and we decided to run some test for the fun of it. The first task was to locate his house. Google Maps managed to locate that within seconds while his GPS system returned an “address not found” message. Round one goes to Google Maps.

The second test was to do the “Where I am” task. Google Maps showed my location within seconds while even after a few minutes, the GPS was still searching for a satellite. Google Maps scored again.

In conclusion, Google Maps is a good alternative to GPS and all I need was an internet enabled cellphone for it to work.

To use Google Maps on your computer, go to http://maps.google.com/.

To use Google Maps on your cellphone, go to m.google.com/maps on your cellphone or go to http://www.google.com/mobile/default/maps.html on your computer.

People who arrived at this page were looking for:

What did people search on Google and brought them to Kisahberuang.com in October 2008? Based on the Google Webmaster Tools, the Top Search Queries for this blog in October 2008 are as below:

hot 15 (32%) – If you follow that link, you will be greeted by some ladies in bikinis and that could be hot for some guys and because of that they found a hot bear too. Is that so? Anyway, the hot link actually went to my post on some hot news on October 15 here.

commentluv enabled jokes (5%) – I could not find the link anymore. This blog has the Commentluv plugin enabled but I seriously do not remember making any jokes about that. So, I wonder what is that all about.

wedding anivasary (5%) – This person could not even spell anniversary correctly and I think he or she must be looking for something to buy for his or her anniversary. Due to that, my 2nd wedding anniversary post got picked up in the process here. I love that!

anas zubedy (5%) – I didn’t know that this guy is famous. Some people have been looking for him and ended up here instead. This search found my Malaysia tag and I wrote a post about his call for unity message here.

jenis gerbera (5%) – I could not locate this link anymore and I have no idea what that is. Based on the search result, this is referring to some flowers… I do not remember writing about any flower in this blog so far.

lainy (3%) – I could not find my link in this search either and the only Lainy that I know is a blogger at Lainy’s Musing and she is one of the top entrecard droppers at this blog. I guess that must be the link.

googl the life of tony hawq (3%) – An interesting search that must be looking for somebody by the name of Tony Hawq but ended up on my post about the popularity of Internet Explorer here. The key words got linked to Tony and The Hawg!, which I misspelled as Hawq (sorry Mr. Hawg), who are among the commenter in that post.

malaysia feet therapy fish spa (3%) -This fish spa stuffs is really getting the attention of Malaysians lately and I did post a video about it here. Now you can find this spa in shopping malls and even at some of the hypermarkets. Anybody has tried that?

shaxx (3%) – I wonder why are people searching for my nickname? Then I realized that there are others out there using that nickname as well… Whoaa… Who can they be?

klci record tracking (3%) – This is related to one of my posts about the Kuala Lumpur Composite Index here. the KLCI is still not in a good shape until today due to the global financial crisis.

old kuala krai station wordpress (3%) – Is that somebody looking for a railway station or a wordpress blog about the railway station in Kuala Krai? Instead they went to my hot news (see above) about the gruesome murder case in Kuala Krai here.

klci jatuh lagi (3%) – I think many Malaysians are upset or worried about the state of the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange where the Composite Index has been going down recently. I posted about that here.

irresponsible boyfriend (3%) – Some girls out there are not happy with their boyfriends I guess. Somehow, these keywords are also in my hot news (see above) and part of that news was about a boyfriend who did some bad things to his girlfriend here.

why smoking “isn t” cool (3%) – This person was probably trying to change his or her lifestyle or may be it was for someone else. It is either he or she is trying to quit smoking or get somebody to quit. I did a post about smoking here.

wow beruang (3%) – This is really cute but it is kinda strange that there are people who search for such a thing. Searching for beruang (bear) would be normal but “wow beruang”, that beats me. Anyway, that went to the front page of this blog.

seram “yahoo com” 2008 -spam (3%) – The weirdest search last month. I could not locate the link anymore. I am still wondering about the relationship between seram (spooky) and Yahoo! in 2008. I also didn’t know that spam could be spooky. Do you know?

umobile commission (3%) – Yet another link that could not be located anymore and I definitely have not written about U-Mobile.

There you go! It is interesting to see what people searched on Google and how certain words in your blog posts would be picked up by the search engine and bring in visitors to your blog.

However, some of them remain a mystery…

People who arrived at this page were looking for:

Have you ever wondered how people came to your blog through search engines? Today, I have to satisfy that curiosity and went over to my cPanel Awstats to find out what people were searching for and eventually landed at Kisahberuang.com.

Firstly, I wanted to see what are the search engines that brought those visitors to this blog. I was expecting either Yahoo or Google to be on the top but I was mistaken. The top search engine that sent visitors to this blog is Live Search from Microsoft!

I have never heard of this search engine before until I checked the stats today. Google is on the second place followed by Yahoo. Have you used Live Search before or I am the only one on planet Earth who just found out about it?

Now, let’s look at the top 10 search keyphrases that brought the visitors here.

kisahberuang (30.7%), wonderful (3.1%), ramadhan comment codes (3.1%), blogroll (3.1%), google (2.3%), merdeka ke 51 (2.3%), salam ramadhan card (2.3%), promote (2.3%), kisah beruang (2.3%) and lastly, 31 merdeka-51 picture (1.5%)

As for the keywords, here are the top 25 search keywords for this blog listed in order;-

kisahberuang, ramadhan, merdeka, google, malaysia, fish, card, wonderful, codes, chrome, salam, proton, 51, comment, blogroll, therapy, of, kisah, 1429, money, error, droppers, promote, ke, beruang

I am going to look at the lists again next month and see what would be the phrases and words that drive visitors to this site. Have you checked yours!