Pocket Streets 3.0

Street Map in your Hand

Pocket Streets is a street map program for those who find themselves frequently traveling in strange cities, or on unfamiliar roads. It lets you put away your fold-up maps, and download to your H/PC portions of street maps from Microsoft's desktop PC map programs, Expedia Streets, Mappoint and Trips 2000. It also works with Microsoft's U.K. street map program, AutoRoute Express GB 2000. Pocket Streets 3.0 is included with each of these Microsoft products.

Pocket Streets 3.0 supports Palm-size PCs, H/PCs with monochrome or color displays, and works with the new H/PC Pro class of handhelds. I have it installed on the HP Jornada 820 and the Sharp PV5000 and it works just great. (It also works fine on Palm-size PCs and Windows CE 2.0 Handheld PCs).

Installing and downloading maps

Pocket Streets 3.0 installs easily. Connect your H/PC to a desktop with Windows CE Services installed. Then click on the Pocket Streets install program and follow the prompts.

It's also easy to select and download maps. Open Expedia Streets on the desktop PC (see Screens 1& 2). Then, open the map of a specific city or geographical area. Use your mouse to click and draw a box around the area of the map you want to export to the H/PC. Then click on the right mouse button and select "Create Map for Pocket Streets" from the drop-down list and give the map file a name.

To download maps to your H/PC, make sure your H/PC is connected to your desktop PC. Start the Windows CE Services "Mobile Devices" application and open Explore. Then simply drag the map file you just created onto a folder on your H/PC. Remember that your H/PC has limited memory, so don't select huge portions of any Expedia Streets map.

Using Pocket Streets on an H/PC

Start Pocket Streets on your H/PC, go to the File, Open menu, select the map you just downloaded, and you're ready to go (see Screen 3). You can search for streets, move around the map, and zoom in and out on a particular area (see Screens 4&5).

Expedia Streets and Pocket Streets let you place electronic "Pushpins" on the map, at a location of interest to you (see Screen 5). For example, you can place a pushpin by a client's address, along with the name of the client and a brief note. These pushpin entries are stored in a file that can be opened and browsed using the Pushpin Explorer. Double tap on any entry in the Pushpin Explorer and you go right to the spot on the map where entry is located.

On the PC version of Expedia you can click on an area and then select the "What's Nearby" tab to get a list of all the restaurants, pubs (i.e., "bars"), historic sites, leisure centers, museums, petrol (gas) stations, and police stations. The UK map even shows a small, local coffee shop which only has 8 seats in it! Unfortunately, you can only access the Pushpins on the H/PC. I just hope a future version of Pocket Streets lets you copy some of this detailed information to your PC Companion.

Pocket Streets 3.0 cannot use map files created by previous versions of Pocket Streets. But you'll probably want to create new maps using the most up-to-date information found in Expedia Streets. If you have been using an older version of Pocket Streets and Expedia Streets, you can import your custom Pushpins into the newer product.

The new version coincides with launches of new desktop Streets products from Microsoft, including AutoRoute Express Great Britain 2000, Expedia Streets, Trips 2000, and MapPoint 2000. They all allow you to select small sections of larger maps displayed on the desktop and export them to Handheld PCs and Palm-size PCs.

The Expedia Streets/Pocket Streets combination is great if you travel to unfamiliar cities. It will be priced in the $50-$70 range and will be available through Microsoft dealers. For more information, visit www.microsoft.com/expedia/.

Screen 1: Pocket Streets is a part of Expedia Streets and other Microsoft desktop PC map programs. Shown here is a section of the city of London, displayed on a desktop PC from Microsoft's AutoRoute Express Great Britain 2000.

Screen 2: This desktop PC view from AutoRoute Express Great Britain 2000 shows how you can display points of interest on the map.

Screen 3: This screen shows Pocket Streets running on a full-screen H/PC Pro, displaying a portion of the map of London downloaded from the desktop PC.

Screen 4: This screen shows Pocket Streets displaying a portion of the map of London on a Palm-size PC.

Screen 5: This screen shows Pocket Streets zooming in on a smaller section of the map of London on a Palm-size PC. Notice the custom "Push Pins" on locations important to the user.

By Craig Peacock
Craig maintains and writes for two of the most popular Windows CE Web sites: www.palmpc.org.uk for H/PCs and www.craigtech.co.uk for Palm-size PCs. He has written a number of articles on Windows CE for U.K. publications and later this year will publish a book on Windows CE, to be titled Windows CE Made Simple (Pub. Butterworth Heinemman, Web: www.bh.com).