I needed to get directions to a friends house today and sure enough I found myself using Google Maps to get directions.  Nothing astounding about that.  What did astonish, and delight me, was the fact that I found you can change your route just my dragging and dropping the route line displayed on the map!  Is this thing really a web application running on just HTML and JavaScript?

Even more amazing is that you can create hyperlink to send out to people using your new preferred route just by clicking "Link to this page."  I assumed it would lose my customized route, but it doesn't, it keeps it in the URL by specifying a direction change at an intersection.

From now on when sending directions or even my address I'm going to make sure to send it as a hyperlink to Google Maps.  It just makes sense.