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Ancestry Daily News
9/19/2001 - Archive
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Travel Planners and GPS |
Travel Planners and GPS
Where in the heck am I? When you ask yourself that question, wouldn't
it be great to be able to see your current location on a map? Wouldn't it be
great to see a map that you could zoom in and out with? Wouldn't it be great
to have one that showed where you are relative to your planned route? In the
last two articles, we reviewed GPS units and travel planning software. Today,
let's talk about how a genealogist might use them together.
What Is It?
You plan your trip, you take your trip, you watch your progress. We're talking
about knowing where you've been, where you are, where you're going, and when
you'll get there. These systems allow a passenger in the car to tell you when
to turn to get to a particular hotel, restaurant, museum, library, or courthouse.
If you have good instructions, you can even find out where to park in advance.
I've taken trips using Microsoft Streets and Trips 2001 ("ST"), Rand McNally
Tripmaker 2001 ("TM"), and Delorme Map N Go 6.0 ("MNG"). All of them work with
GPS units, all of them have maps, and all of them let you plan your trip.
Planning Your Trip
We discussed trip planning last time, but to summarize - you enter your starting
point, you enter your ending point, and you enter any way points or stops you
intend to make along the way. The amount of information you can enter, and control
over the schedule, varies for different programs. I like to be able to choose
where to quit driving each day. Most of these programs will ask you what time
you want to start each day, what time you want to stop, and how fast you like
to drive on different types of roads. There is no prize for scheduling the fastest
trip in history from your house to your great- grandparents' final resting place,
so don't fudge the numbers. It just doesn't help you to make a bad schedule.
Given the information above, the program will calculate a route, and the points
where each day will end. How you proceed at that point varies. ST draws a little
crescent moon on the route where each day ends, TM uses a purple pennant. You
can then add stopping points for the night manually. TM lets you say what you'll
do each evening, called "End of Day Choices." If you find that the plan calls
for you to be in the middle of nowhere, you can widen your search for choices
by increasing the radius of your search for hotels. MNG shows all the hotels
along the route, instead of just the ones near the end of day driving point.
TM will then offer to make flight, hotel, or car rental reservations for the
places that you've chosen. I have not used this feature. Sometimes the computer
suggests a route I wouldn't take. For example, ST wanted me to go to Oklahoma
City to get from Fort Worth to Amarillo. I don't know any people who prefer
that route to taking Highway 287 through Wichita Falls. I added Wichita Falls
as a stopping point, and ST routed me through OKC to get from the Falls to Amarillo.
I am a map nut, and I like trip planning with all of these programs. I've had
a good experience printing the Travel Package from MNG for cousins to use to
get away from my house. If printing is a big feature for you, give some thought
to it before you choose a tool.
Taking Your Trip
Here's where the GPS comes in handy. As you travel, all three programs will
monitor your progress by displaying a symbol on the map. You can watch it move
as you drive, but I don't recommend this practice for safety reasons. In fact,
I don't recommend that you ever try to read or use a notebook computer and operate
a motor vehicle at the same time. One person operates the car, another person
operates the computer. Write it on your hand if you have to.
Monitoring your progress is fun, or it can be if you don't stress about whether
you are forty-five seconds behind the calculated schedule. MNG will give verbal
driving directions if you wish. MNG and TM will show your speed and direction.
TM will show the distance to the goal, and the time remaining to drive there.
TM also has a Kids' View of the GPS, that shows a turtle for your car when you
are going slowly, and works up through cheetah to eagle as your speed increases.
As I mentioned last month, I would not bank on the accuracy of the program's
database of gasoline stations, but you can always find "Points of Interest"
near your current location. TM will show the next exit and the nearest attraction,
but I haven't seen this screen information be accurate very often. It appears
to put accurate up there when you open the window, and then leave it there for
the rest of the day, while you drive hundreds of miles past those locations.
I once made a wrong turn between Wichita KS and Dodge City. I thought it was
likely that I was off the right road for the obvious reasons - I expected a
highway and found a residential neighborhood. I was able, at great risk to myself
and the good people of Kansas, to glance at my computer and realize that the
next left turn would take me back to my intended route. I'm not saying that
the end justifies the means, but I remain unrepentant for taking that risk.
When I cross a bridge, I often wonder what the name of the river is. With these
programs, if the sign for the bridge is gone, you can still see your car in
the middle of the Missouri River.
I prefer the ST directions to the other two for long stretches of interstate,
because I like to check my progress more often than every 219 miles. ST puts
a plus sign to the left of those long trip segments, and clicking on it will
open up an outline of mileposts every 20 miles or so. I find that this lets
me worry about whether I'm on time or not, just the way that I like. With the
other two, I can still worry about whether I'm ahead or behind, but not just
the way I like.
Seeing the Sites
After you get to the city, you'll need some way to get around town. On a recent
trip to San Jose, I was able to tell in advance where the Tech Museum of Innovation
is, and how far I would have to walk to find the Peralta Adobe. I recommend
the walk to everyone. You might find evidence of the location of the Electrical
Light Tower.
As I've said 'til it's bothersome, the hotel names aren't always right, and
the restaurants aren't always still there either. There's a saying in the software
world - "Any printout more than 2 pages long is obsolete by the time it prints."
Well, a CDROM is much larger than 2 pages, and unless it deals with historical
facts that won't change, it will be out of date like last summer's Capri pants
as soon as you get it. That said, the quality of information on these disks
is pretty good. They often have addresses and phone numbers for hotels and restaurants,
and occasionally links to web sites as well.
What Else?
One of these programs once allowed me to import my contact list from Microsoft
Outlook, and it put a pushpin at each contact's address. I thought that was
a great way to get a feel for where my contacts are. You might want to do that
with society members, or family members. If you decide you want to do that,
be sure that you clean up your addresses better than mine. Enter at least the
city and state for each contact, so you'll be able to get an approximate location
for the pushpin.
When you drive up to the cemetery, you can create a pushpin on your map for
that spot. When you drive up to the ancestral home site, you can put a different
symbol or pushpin there, by using the current GPS position to identify the spot.
When you get home, you can publish the map as a web page, or just save it for
your next trip into the past.
Beau Sharbrough is the lame duck president of GENTECH, and the founder of
the GENTECH and FGS Web sites. The RootsWorks series of articles focuses on
genealogical applications for generic technologies. He would like to hear from
you at mailto:beau@sharbrough.net,
but due to the volume of e-mail received, he is unable to answer every e-mail
message received. Please note that he cannot assist you with your individual
computer problems, as he is generally busy developing The Virtual Excuse, a
product to promote harmony in family life. Visit Beau's Web site for links to
previous articles and updates on TVE. Beau is the father of two college-age
girls who make excuses adroitly, and is a proud graduate of Texas A&M University.
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