It would be fair to say that many benighted souls spend considerable portions of their lives trekking through strange streets in bafflement, lost in a world that is certainly not their own. It probably doesn't matter a great deal if those poor souls are me and you, but for some professions, knowing exactly where they are is vital.
Ambulances, taxi fleets, hauliers, doctors and inter-company delivery vans have to navigate an increasingly complex countryside, where the drivers' local knowledge and patience can be stretched beyond its natural limits.
Ireland is not the best sign-posted country in the world, and if you set out, say, from Enniskerry to Clondalkin, the chances are you will run into a series of new roads and roundabouts and estates, some of which will not yet be on the map. Routing software and hardware might be able to help you find your way.
It might, that is, if Ireland were like the US. The big problem in Ireland, and across Europe, is the cost of the basic data. In the US, map data is regarded as a public commodity - the public's tax money pays for it - making it free for every citizen. The same applies in Japan, where the data is extremely detailed. But not in Europe.
"I go to a user conference every year in the US, and I hire a car that has a tracking system in it," said one geographer. "Sixty-five per cent of vehicles over there have these systems. But they have them because the data's free."
Users can go to a website for Texas and download every land parcel in the state. But for Europe, it costs a fortune to make find-your-way software, because the company making the software has to buy the maps first.
"You need to have intelligent information inside the product, to be able to route - in other words you need a street network," says Paul Synnott of Paradigm Technology, the Irish distributors of ESRI (Environmental Systems Research Institute) geographical software.
The Institute makes software that plans routes for professional drivers. The Ordnance Survey, Iris and AND Data in Galway - its main competitors - supply digital maps to give the GIS (geographical information system) a framework to work in. This software uses maps, plus tracking from satellites and sometimes ground stations too, to tell drivers and their base stations where they are, showing the vehicle as a point moving along the road.
Hill-walkers use Magellan GPS (global positioning system) devices as a more basic version of this: several satellites get a fix on the GPS receiver's signal, and it gives them a reference based on a map - the blue numbers on the edges of the standard maps of Ireland.
The agreed information behind Irish maps is the national grid. This is a reference frame that starts at point 00, which is 250 kilometres west and 200 kilometres south of Kerry, and uses a co-ordinate system running east and north of that imaginary point. Every position in Ireland has a reference based on the grid, using an easting value of six digits and a northing value of six digits.
The amount of data is huge, so a two-year rotation cycle for maps is normal, meaning that our maps are always at least two years behind, and the software even older. The maps are updated using aerial photography: aircraft are constantly flying around taking these photos.
The transportation market is huge here: hauliers, taxi drivers, bus companies and delivery fleets are all either starting to use the software or at least investigating its possibilities. One major selling point of this new technology is security, as it enables companies to track within metres the location of each vehicle in their fleet.
For the ordinary user, there are various systems. You can put an aerial on the car and use your hill-walking GPS system. You can buy a little gadget from the AA for £50 - very popular with people who drive for a living - which directs you by road numbers and roundabouts, and also by churches and pubs, mimicking traditional Ireland. You can hook this up to your PC and print out the optimum route.
The biggest-selling software on the consumer market is Microsoft's Autoroute Express Europe, and MapPoint, the business version. Microsoft uses a combination of Ordnance Survey data with information from Navtech (Navigation Technologies). NavTech is the company which powers the in-car systems used by many auto makers, as well as various routing web pages and other applications.
For £60, the PC user gets a map of Europe which can build a pretty good route from door to door. It can be a little shaky on small streets, and it is limited by the fact that the data is relatively old. But if you want to plot a route from Dublin to Florence, it will do it accurately and in some detail.
Before Microsoft bought the company and renamed the software, Autoroute was used by truck fleets, to enable drivers to have turn-by-turn directions, says David Mulligan, product unit manager for Microsoft's home and retail group in Dublin. Microsoft turned it into a consumer product and it took off.
"You have a detailed map of the area you want to travel around, and overlaid on that you have a road network that at best contains absolute turn-by-turn data: you know what's a one-way street, when to turn left. Of course, that's a dynamic thing - turn-by-turn data change - and has to be updated," says Mulligan.
The software contains a rich store of data on hotels, landmarks, restaurants, ski resorts, museums etc - it's localised in Dublin, so the information is excellent. MapPoint, which is aimed at business people, has demographic data, but business information can be added. In both programs, routes can be plotted in plenty of detail - speed, points of interest, diversions and stop-offs.
If you have a GPS sensor connected to your laptop by the necessary card, you can go to "Tools" in Autoroute, point to "GPS" and track yourself on the map. Palmtop users who have bought Autoroute can upload the Pocket Streets version onto their palmtop to find their way around the place.
Geographers say that the killer application for routing is going to be wireless technology. With a WAP it should be possible to use routing software and satellites together, making mapping just another part of daily life. It's all ahead of us. If we can only find our way.
Useful webpages:
www.irlgov.ie/osi/Pages/main/services.htm - Ordnance Survey
www.paradigm.ie - ParadigmTechnology
http://www.iris-gis.com - Iris, which makes maps of Ireland
www.end2end.co.uk - End2End makes Track-IT, which uses GPS antenna and receivers and Nokia 9000 Communicators in vehicles, co-ordinated by a PC controlling the fleet
www.navtech.com -Navigation Technologies makes the mapdata used by many route products
www.theaa.com - the AA
www.rac.co.uk - the RAC, for travel in Britain
www.mapquest.com - MapQuest, for travel in the US and Europe
www.michelin-travel.com - Michelin, in French, for Europe