Forget GPS! Create your own maps to help you get where you're going.
Let's assume you don't have a GPS navigation package for your Pocket PC because you wouldn't use it often enough to justify the expense. However, you still need maps occasionally, to find the soccer complex your son or daughter is playing at next weekend, or to send to clients to help them find your office. What do you do?
You could go to MapQuest or Yahoo and print out a map, but paper maps get lost or crumbled. Besides, you've got a Pocket PC. Why waste the paper? Download the map from the Web, size and crop it to fit your Pocket PCs display, and save it in a format that will display on your Windows Mobile device. Here's how you do it.
1. Download maps from the Web
There are a number of sites you can use to get street maps, but for simplicity's sake, I'll focus on Yahoo Maps. In addition, there are two scenarios to consider. The first is where you already know how to get to the general area of your destination, and the second is where you're taking a longer trip and need more than one map to get you there. This article focuses on the first scenario, but I'll discuss the second briefly towards the end.
- On your desktop PC, open your Web browser, go to Yahoo Maps (http://maps.yahoo.com/), and find the map you're looking for. To do this, you enter the address, closest intersection for your destination, or airport code.
- Zoom in or out on the map until you have the desired detail you're looking for. If it's in an unfamiliar city, you might want a larger view of the map, showing the major highway that get you into the city, and the roads you have to take to get from the highway to your destination. If you already know the city, zoom in on the actual destination to get more detail.
- When the Yahoo map is displayed the way you want it (Fig. 1), copy the map to your desktop PC. There are several ways to do this:
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