maps

Longer days and better weather mean one thing: bike season! Time to bust out those two-wheelers and take advantage of the beaming sunshine. The only thing standing in your way is figuring out which route to take.

Safety should be a cyclist's number-one priority — public streets cause dangerous encounters between cars and bikes. Ride the City is a web (free), iPhone ($2), and Android app ($2) that helps velos locate the safest, speediest routes around town.

Enter in point A and point B, choose between the "safer," "safe," and most "direct" option, and Ride the City will calculate total distance, time, and elevation gain. It'll also show bike shops and bike share pick-up/drop-off locations along the way.

Our favorite feature is the map's color-coded bike lanes: green designates bike lane, path, or greenway, and purple denotes all other streets along your route. The map will show you bike routes, lanes, and protected paths without a starting point and destination as well. It's a great reference while you're figuring out your way on the road.

Ride the City has 39 cities all over the world fully mapped, so pull your bike out of the shed and get cycling!

We can't all take helicopter tours of the world's most beautiful places while on fantasy dates with highly coveted bachelors, but we can get stunning bird's-eye views courtesy of the great urban jungles stitched together in Wide Web World. The video was created by Paul Wex using 3D maps from Nokia Here.

Take an aerial tour of the greatest sights in Sydney, Toronto, San Francisco, Chicago, LA, and more in this creative take on 3D mapping. Wide Web World was recently chosen as a Vimeo Staff Pick, a high honor considering all the incredible offerings available on the site.

Paul also created the musical soundtrack to the video and is offering the MP3 to PayPal donors with a $1 minimum donation. If you enjoyed Wide World Web, then check out Paul's entire body of video work, especially Big Little World, which features spectacular footage of the Seychelles Islands.

The saga for iOS 6 maps app alternatives has resurged with the release of Nokia's native maps app Here (free). And no, we're not just inviting you to click. That's the name of the actual app. It's also the name for Nokia's evolving map project, which powers the new mobile app for iOS and aims to help users explore and discover new places. Nokia Maps already had a mobile web app in place, so the turn-by-turn voice navigation, traffic reporting, and public transit directions aren't anything new. But we did like the app's fresh approach to bookmarking with its Foursquare-style Collections feature, which organizes favorited points of interest and most-frequented addresses into categorized lists.

Although the iTunes reviews of the app, which was released today, are less than spectacular, Nokia Maps' mobile website was one of our favorite alternatives — we even called it the most underrated navigation app. We're curious to see what the company's native version can do, and also about your thoughts on Here. How does Nokia's native app perform in your area? Does it compare to Google Maps?

For long road trips, it's about the journey, not the destination. If you're planning on going the distance, OnTheWay is a necessary resource to break up your ride with fun stops along the way. Enter in the start and end points, choose your route, and OnTheWay will show featured points of interest for every leg of the trip.

Discover amazing hole-in-the-wall eateries courtesy of Foursquare, hit up a local farmers market, or take in the views from an unknown vista. Save the stops of interest, view directions, and share your trip via email, Twitter, or Facebook, or with a unique link.

UPDATE: As of today, it looks like ClassicMap is no longer available in the iTunes App Store, but we'll keep looking for new iOS map app alternatives!

ClassicMap (free) is one small step for iPhones and one giant step for sentimentalists — it reincarnates Google Maps for iOS 6. ClassicMap looks and feels just like the original Maps app, but it's certainly not an alternative. Users can perform address searches and drop a pin anywhere on the map like good ol' Google Maps. They can't, however, look up points of interest by name, nor get walking, driving, or transit directions. One more thing users can do: reminisce about the not-too-distant tech past and hope for a brighter future of iOS 6 map apps.

Let us know what you think of ClassicMap, and share your experience with the new Apple Maps or any alternatives you've tried in the comments.