(FORTUNE Magazine) – You and your family are cruising down Interstate 64 in Kentucky. You've been promising your young son that you'll find someplace fun to stop, but you don't have any ideas, and he's starting to whine. You pull into a rest area, figuring you can look at that familiar map with the YOU ARE HERE splotch, pore over a bunch of brochures, and identify a nearby tourist trap that will interest the lad. Instead, fright of frights, you're faced with a video kiosk, and damned if its screen doesn't resemble -- gulp -- a computer! Never fear, cyberphobes. Like an increasing number of GIS applications available to consumers, the five visitor kiosks being tested by the state of Kentucky are aimed at people like you. This one, for instance, lets you call up tourist attractions in four regions of the state. Touch ''Keeneland'' on the screen, and you get a video clip of racehorses, a voice-over explaining that visitors are welcome to early-morning workouts at the racetrack, and, best of all for the weary traveler, clear directions for getting there. More than 3,000 people a day use the kiosks, which were designed by PlanGraphics, a GIS consulting firm in Frankfort, Kentucky, and programmed by Applied Graphics of St. Paul. According to PlanGraphics President John Antenucci, drivers can expect such kiosks on the Massachusetts Turnpike next year. For business travelers, Strategic Mapping's Local Expert software combines maps and tourist data on floppy disks for laptops. The program offers information on more than 100 cities around the world. Updated bimonthly, it features a selection of hotels and restaurants, useful tips such as where to change money, and listings of cultural and sporting events that will coincide with your trip. An August visitor to Rome, however, discovered that the program isn't so expert yet. It gave the correct phone number to call for tickets to Tosca at the Baths of Caracalla, but almost all of the 24 Italian restaurants listed were closed for much of the month. (Prices: $99 for the program with one city; $25 per additional city; $15 per update.) So-called personal navigation systems are gradually making their way into cars. In Japan, some 22,000 drivers already use them. The systems, which combine an antenna, a CD-ROM player, and a computer built into the dash, display full-color maps that are updated as the car travels. If the driver gets hungry, the computer will direct him to the nearest restaurant. Price: $2,000 and up; Japanese electronics companies may offer U.S. versions by the end of next year. GIS can even help you buy a house. A Seattle realtor linked via modem to the Puget Sound multiple-listing service can type in criteria such as ''3BR, Kirkland area, $350,000 to $450,000'' and pull up a map showing available homes in that suburb, complete with price tags. Zooming in on a particular neighborhood, the realtor can show how close a house is to schools, parks, and shopping malls. Gary McAvoy, CEO of Northwest GeoGrafx, which designed the system, says that by next fall realtors will be able to show house hunters photos of the properties on-screen. Eventually the system will include digitized videos, so prospective buyers can ''walk'' through houses in the realtor's office instead of driving all the way to Kirkland only to discover that that third bedroom is really a broom closet.