Other Street Navigation Software

In addition to Street Atlas USA, here are two other popular street navigation programs available for navigating the roads of America. I don’t have enough space to fully describe them, but here’s some general information in case you’re shopping for software.
New versions of street navigation software are usually released annually with new street and POI data as well as new features. If you travel in an area that doesn’t experience much growth or change, you probably don’t need to upgrade every year. On the other hand, because all the street navigation software packages retail for under $50, it’s not that expensive to stay current.

Microsoft Streets & Trips
Microsoft’s Streets & Trips is a popular alternative to DeLorme’s software. The program has all the basic street navigation features, including some advanced features such as saving a map as a Web page, downloading current road construction information from the Internet, and creating drive time zones (such as show me all the places I can drive to from a certain location in under an hour). The software is easy to use and comes bundled with Pocket Streets, the Pocket PC version of Streets & Trips. streets.

Rand McNally StreetFinder & TripMaker Deluxe
Rand McNally, in the map business for over 130 years, is one of the main providers of U.S. paper street maps and road atlases. The StreetFinder & TripMaker Deluxe software package provides all the features you’d expect in a street navigation program, along with Mobile Travel Guide ratings for hotels and restaurants and suggested scenic tours and one-day driving trips. To read more about the product, go to www.randmcnally.com.

GPS car navigation systems

Street navigation software coupled with a laptop and GPS receiver isn’t your only option to stay found while driving through the asphalt jungle. GPS car navigation systems are starting to become popular as factory-installed options and third-party add-ons for cars and trucks. These systems are streamlined versions of street navigation programs, offering basic navigation features such as real-time map display, address searches, and route planning.
Car navigation systems range from portable, handheld GPS receivers that are equally at home on the trail or the road to systems permanently installed in a vehicle. Some of the more sophisticated products use gyroscopes, connections to the Vehicle Speed Sensor (car-speak for a speedometer), and three-axis accelerometers to provide speed and distance information when a GPS signal is temporarily lost; such as in tunnels or urban areas with tall buildings. I have to admit I’m not a true road warrior and don’t spend lots of time in my car. However, I did have a chance to try out a Magellan RoadMate GPS navigation system (www.magellangps.com) for a while and was pretty impressed.
RoadMate mounts on your dashboard (as shown here) and is portable so you can easily transfer it from one car to another. The version I tested had an internal hard drive that was preloaded with street maps of the entire U.S., so you can just plug it into your cigarette lighter and go. This is perfect for a business traveler who just flew into a city he’s never been to before and has to spend the next couple of days in a rental car trying to find his way around. Routes are calculated in a matter of seconds, and a large, high-resolution map screen keeps your progress updated. And with a touch screen, voice prompts, and a simple user interface, even my nontechnical friends and family members were able to figure out how to use it in no time.
Granted, the RoadMate is a single purpose device, costs about as much as a low-end laptop, and doesn’t have all the features of a street navigation software package. However, if I were regularly spending a lot of time on the road or visiting cities I didn’t know very well, I’d give some serious consideration to it or a similar GPS navigation system. My crystal ball tells me it won’t be too many years into the future when in-car navigation systems start to become standard in most new cars and trucks.

Moving Maps with Earthmate

In addition to its mapping software, DeLorme also offers the small Earthmate GPS receiver that’s designed to work with Street Atlas USA and other map programs that use GPS data. (You can use other types of GPS receivers with Street Atlas USA, too, but the Earthmate is designed to work with the program with a minimal amount of setup.)
You can connect the Earthmate to a laptop via a Universal Serial Bus (USB) cable, serial cable, or a PowerPack that supports Bluetooth wireless communications. After you have the GPS receiver hooked up and Street Atlas is running, the two general modes of operation are

• General navigation: Street Atlas USA processes the received GPS data and displays your current position on the map with a series of dots that shows where you’ve traveled. As you move, the map automatically moves to show your position. In addition, your speed, direction of travel, and GPS satellite information is shown in the program’s GPS tab8.
• Route: After you create a route in addition to the general navigation features, Street Atlas USA displays turn-by-turn directions onscreen, informing you how far your destination is and the travel time to your destination. If you have the voice feature enabled, Street Atlas USA announces the directions; you can choose from several different types of voices. If you’re driving by yourself, be careful when using the GPS features of Street Atlas USA with your laptop sitting next to you on the passenger seat. Fight the tendency to get distracted from your driving while you look at the screen and use the mouse and keyboard to enter commands. I recommend someone riding shotgun — that is, a navigator who’s in charge of running Street Atlas USA. If you drive solo a lot, get a laptop-mounting bracket that places your computer in a more visible and easy-to-use location.

Printing and saving directions

After you have a map and driving directions (read earlier sections to follow me to Sam Wo’s), you may need to make copies. Street Atlas USA has a number of options for getting the information off your computer screen and printing it to paper or saving it to a file.
To print or save maps and directions, click the Print tab. You see two buttons:

• Click the Map button for options to print or save the current map.
• Click the Route button for print and save options of the current route.

Saving and printing maps
All the Print and Save command buttons are next to the Overview Map on the
far right of the Print tab area. You have buttons for

• Printing the current map
• E-mailing the print area as an attachment
• Saving the print area to disk as a graphics file
• Copying the print area to the Clipboard If you select the Print Preview check box, the map is reduced in scale, and a rectangle is displayed around the print area.

Saving and printing routes
You can also save and print route information in a number of different formats, including an overview map with directions, turn-by-turn details, and as strip maps (detailed maps that follow a route with directions in the margins). Check the type of directions you’d like to create, using the Save and Print command buttons at the far end of the Tab area to output them. Figure shows a preview of a Travel Package, which is a format that prints the route map with directions at the bottom of the page.
If you want only a text version of the route directions, click the Route button in the Print tab and then mark the Directions check box. You can then either save the directions as a text file or e-mail them to a friend.
If you end up in Chinatown, the entrance to Sam Wo’s restaurant is through the street-level kitchen, so don’t think you’re in the wrong place. Head up the narrow stairs to the second floor and don’t disturb the cooks on your way up. Bon appétit!

Creating a route with DeLorme Street Atlas USA,

If you’ve followed the chapter to this point, you can use the example map created in the earlier section, “Finding an Address with Street Atlas USA.” Suppose I want to give my friends this map of Chinatown, showing where Sam Wo’s restaurant is located. Great, but that’s not going to be much help if they’ve just arrived at the airport and are driving into the city. For their needs, I use Street Atlas USA to create a route for them to follow to noodle nirvana.

1. Click the Route tab.
2. In the Start text box, enter your starting address. I use a cool Street Atlas USA feature that lets you use the three-letter code of an airport. I enter SFO, which is the code for San Francisco International Airport.For the destination, enter the address in the Finish text box. Here, I enter Sam Wo’s address: 813 Washington Street, 94108. When you enter a ZIP code as part of the search, Street Atlas USA removes the ZIP code from the Finish text box when the calculated route is displayed. The ZIP is required for the search but isn’t shown with the route.
3. Click the Calculate button.

Presto! A map appears with an outlined route from the airport to Sam Wo’s.The route distance is shown as well as an estimate of how long it will take to get there. Remember that your Calculate result is based on driving the speed limit with a normal amount of traffic. You can zoom in on the map to get more detail. On all street navigation software, you’ll find that the travel times for routes tend to be conservative estimates. Nine times out of ten, you end up taking less time to reach your destination.

Getting from Here to There with Street Atlas USA

Knowing the address of someplace and where it’s located is a start, but getting there in a timely fashion without getting lost or frustrated is the true test of a driver (or his or her navigator).
One of the benefits of street navigation software is that it can automatically generate a route between two or more points. The software examines the roads between your starting point and destination, measuring distance and factoring in speed limits to select either the shortest or fastest route. Street navigation software can give you only its best guess when it comes to a route. A program can’t account for new roads that were built after the map data was compiled or local traffic patterns. You’ll probably be able to find faster and more direct routes in cities based on your own local knowledge and experience. Although routes from software might not always be perfect, they’re much more accurate than guessing or driving around aimlessly.
Street Atlas USA has a number of powerful options for creating routes. To give you a better idea of how route finding works, start off simple.

Finding an Address with Street Atlas USA

Whenever I’m in San Francisco, I always try to visit Sam Wo’s, my favorite authentic, Chinese noodle joint, located smack-dab in the middle of Chinatown. Anytime I hear about friends or acquaintances heading to San Francisco, I always tell them to head downtown and check out this famous Chinese fixture. It’s been around for 100 years, Kerouac and Ginsberg hung out there, and it was home to arguably the rudest waiter in the world. If you don’t know San Francisco, finding this restaurant can be challenging. And even if you can get around the City by the Bay fairly well, giving precise directions to visitors can also be a little demanding. This is where street navigation programs like Street Atlas USA really shine. As an example of finding a location and creating a map to get to it, here’s how to find Sam Wo’s restaurant:

1. Click the Find tab and then click the QuickSearch button. You can perform several different types of searches, but this is a simple QuickSearch. (I talk about Advanced searches and Radar in a minute.) The Find tab options and commands are shown in Figure.
2. In the Search For text box, enter the address you want to find. Sam Wo’s restaurant is located at 813 Washington Street, 94108. You can enter the city and state along with the address, but if you know the ZIP code, it’s quicker and easier to use it instead.
3. Click the Search button. Street Atlas USA searches through map and street data; if the address is valid, a map of the location is displayed. In this case, Sam Wo’s is exactly where I remembered it to be.

In addition to a QuickSearch, which is great for basic searches involving places, addresses, ZIP codes, and coordinates, you’ll find two other options in the Find tab:

• Advanced searches: As the name suggests, this option performs more detailed, advanced searches. You can search by categories (such as rest areas, schools, and parks) as well as specify searches take place within a certain area (such as a ZIP code, county, or the current displayed map).
• Radar searches: This is cool feature that lets you search for travelrelated POIs within a certain distance of the current center of the map — or if you’re using a GPS receiver with Street Atlas USA, from your current location.

For example, you could request, “Find me all the restaurants within one mile,” and a list of nearby restaurants would be displayed. When you click a restaurant in the list, Street Atlas USA draws a route on the map showing you how to get to the restaurant and tells you the address, how far away it is, and how long it will take to arrive.

Getting POI information

Getting Point of Interest information from Street Atlas USA is a snap.
Here’s how.
When you zoom in to level 15, you start to see POIs on the map, such as restaurants, gas stations, theaters, hotels, and other businesses and services. At Zoom Data level 16, symbols appear that let show you what the POI is. For example, a plate with a fork and knife means a restaurant. If you don’t know what a symbol means, click the HELP button in the window title and choose Map Legend from the menu to display a list of all the map symbols and their meanings.
When you move the cursor over a POI, the business or service name, its phone number (if available), and the type of POI are shown at the bottom of the map. You can also get more information about a POI (or any map feature) by moving the cursor over the POI, right-clicking, and choosing Info from the pop-up menu. Information about the POI appears in the Tab area, which you can view by clicking the Info tab, as shown in Figure. Don’t treat the POI database like an up-to-date phone directory. If you look up restaurants, gas stations, and other businesses in your city, you’ll probably find a few listed that are out of business and others that are missing. DeLorme and other map companies try to keep POI data as current as possible, but because businesses come and go so often, it’s difficult to keep up with all the changes.

Moving around in Street Atlas USA

Mouse around a little inside a Street Atlas USA map. Notice that as you move the cursor around, information appears on the lower edge of the map. Anytime you move the cursor over a map feature, whether it’s a road, river, or even some open space, a line of text appears at the bottom of the map with a brief description of the feature.
The numbers in parentheses that appear before a street name description show the range of street addresses in the general vicinity of the cursor. This is handy for getting a quick idea of addresses on a particular street. You’re probably going to want to see more map than what appears on the screen, and Street Atlas USA has several ways to move the map, including

• Centering: Click a location to center the map over the cursor.
• Dragging: Whenever you move the cursor to the edge of the map, it turns into a hand icon. Hold the left mouse button down and drag the map to scroll.
• Arrow keys: You can use Alt+ the keyboard arrow keys to move the map in the direction of the arrow key you pressed.
• Compass Rose: In the Control Panel, beneath the zoom tools, is the Compass Rose. This is a series of nine buttons with yellow arrows. Click a button to scroll the map in the direction of the arrow. If you click the middle button in the Compass Rose, the previously viewed map is displayed. You can view up to the last 256 previously displayed maps by clicking this button.

Zooming in and out

With Street Atlas USA, you can view the entire United States and then zoom in for street-level detail. As you zoom in, the Data Zoom level, which is displayed at the top of the Control Panel, increases. Data Zoom level 2–0 shows the entire U.S., and Data Zoom level 16–0 shows the maximum amount of detail for a location.
Beneath the Data Zoom are three buttons that control zooming. These buttons, each with red arrows and pictures of the Earth, are from left to right

• Zoom out three levels: Click the button with three arrows pointing away from Earth.Zoom out: Click the button with the red arrow pointing away from Earth.
• Zoom in: Click the button with the red arrow pointing toward Earth. In addition to the zoom buttons, DeLorme also uses Octave controls, which are up and down arrows next to the Zoom Data level value, allowing you to have finer control over zooming in and out. Click the up arrow to zoom out; click the down arrow to zoom in.

When you click an Octave control, notice that the Zoom Data level number changes. The number to the right of the dash next to the Zoom Data level is the octave value. For example, if the current Zoom Data level were 12-3, clicking the Octave down arrow would zoom in and change the value to 12-4. (Octaves range between 0 and 7, just like a diatonic music scale.) You can also zoom in on a specific area by holding down the left mouse button and dragging down and to the right. This draws a rectangle and will zoom in to that area when you release the mouse button. You can zoom out by holding down the left mouse button and dragging up and to the left.

Exploring the Street Atlas USA interface

The Street Atlas USA user interface is made up of four different. They include the

• Map: The main map takes up most of the screen and is where all the action takes place. You’ll find roads, bodies of water, parks, businesses and services, and other features displayed.
• Control Panel: The Control Panel, located to the right of the map, contains commands for moving around in the map and zooming in and out.
• Tab functions and options: Primary mapping commands and options are underneath the map in a series of tab items. For example, click the Find tab for searching commands and options. You can shrink the size of the Tab area to show more map area by clicking the down-arrow icon in the right corner of the Tab area. If the Tab area has been minimized, clicking any tab will automatically expand it.
• Overview Map: The Overview Map appears to the right of the Tab area and contains a small map with a larger overview of the main map that you’re viewing. You can customize the Tab area by clicking the HELP button in the window title and selecting the Tab Manager menu item. Use the Tab Manager to show, hide, or reorder the tabs.

Navigating Street Atlas USA

The first thing that you notice about Street Atlas USA is that it doesn’t use a familiar Windows, menu-based user interface. DeLorme uses a unique user interface with its mapping programs; after you get the hang of it, it’s pretty easy to use. I walk you through the user interface and then show you how to move around inside a map.
Be sure to quickly browse through the PDF help file that comes with Street Atlas USA, which you can access by clicking the HELP button at the top of the window. Street Atlas USA has a rich set of commands, often offering you several different ways to perform a single task or operation.

Discovering Street Atlas USA Features

Like other street navigation software, Street Atlas USA displays road maps of the United States, finds addresses, and creates routes between two or more points. Check out a few other program features that are important to know about.

• POIs: All street navigation programs contain extensive databases of POIs. POIs refer to Points of Interest, not to Hawaiian side dishes made from taro root. POIs include restaurants (some of which might serve poi), hotels, parks, gas stations, and other locations you might be interested in while traveling. Street Atlas USA has a POI database that contains over four million businesses, services, and organizations.
• Voice support: If you’re using a laptop and GPS receiver as part of a car navigation system, Street Atlas USA can give you voice instructions when you need to turn to reach your destination. You can also use a voice recognition feature to give Street Atlas USA commands instead of using a keyboard or mouse.
• Routable roads: A big issue that all map companies face is ensuring that their road data is accurate, which can be very challenging considering the number of new roads that are built every year. Street Atlas USA has a feature that allows you to draw in roads that are missing on a map. After you create a road, Street Atlas USA can use it when calculating routes.
• Customizable maps: Street Atlas USA has an extensive collection of drawing tools for customizing maps with symbols, shapes, and text annotations. Street Atlas USA has many more features than I can cover in the space of this chapter (such as measuring distances and trip planning that takes fuel consumption as well as the number of hours spent driving into consideration).

To find out more about all the program’s features, visit www.delorme.com. Street Atlas USA comes on two CD-ROMs: one with the installation program and files, and the other with map data files. By default, you need to insert the map data CD-ROM each time you use the program. If you have enough space, you can copy the map data files to your hard drive; see the online Help for instructions.

Using DeLorme Street Atlas USA

In the pre-PC days, taking a trip across town, a state, or the country to visit someplace you’d never been before often involved planning worthy of a major expedition. You’d have to carefully check maps, trying to figure out the shortest and fastest routes, guessing when and where you’d need to stop for gas, scribbling down notes, and highlighting roads on paper maps. That’s all changed with inexpensive and easy-to-use street navigation software. Just run a program on your PC and enter the address of your starting point and the final destination. Then, a few mouse clicks later, you’ve got both a map and exact turn-by-turn directions for how to get from Point A to Point B. And as an added bonus, if you have a laptop and GPS receiver, you can take this software on the road with you, track your location in real-time, and get helpful hints in reaching your destination. (Most street navigation programs also have versions that run on PDAs for ultimate portability.) Several street navigation software packages are on the market that can keep you from getting lost. They all generally work the same, with the primary differences in the user interface and support of advanced features. If you’ve never used a street navigation program before, this chapter gets you moving in the right direction. I focus on DeLorme’s Street Atlas USA, showing you its basic features and how to use them.