3rd Party Gps Maps

[+Xitor]

I just got a Sportrack color and love it so far. Especially after the firmware upgrade. A friend at work got me hooked on Geocaching. Trying to justify this thing though, I'm wondering why their aren't any third party maps out there? For instance - I love Cracker Barrell - there are a lot of GPS users out there driving around - why couldn't companies such a Cracker Barrell provide a map in a format that we could use to always home in on the nearest restaurant.

 

Imagine how popular this would be for your favorite Wingstop, Chilis, what ever your favorites are. Users would like it, the Companies would like it because it could increase their business. GPS manufacturers would like it because it would be another value add.

 

However, from what I've seen GPS seems very limited in its proprietary maps from the vendors only.

 

Thanks,

David

[+Stunod]

You don't need a custom map, you just need a list of waypoints.

[robertlipe]

The only thing that suprises me more than this request coming up is it coming up twice in two different forums. It took me a while to dig through the archives (yahoo's search engine stinks) but I found the following threads:

 

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Magellan_Mer...n/message/22376

 

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Magellan_Mer...n/message/22408

[Neo_Geo]

If you'd bought a Garmin, then you could install MetroGuide USA. MetroGuide maps are chock-full-o' Points of Interest such as these restaurants and a whole lot more!

[+embra]

It's a common feature on retailers' web pages to have a map locator (often a link to MapQuest or something). I expect that someday we'll be able to download a waypoint. Maybe we need to lobby the map providers to add this as a feature; lord knows you can get this off most mapping programs easily enough now.

 

Of ocurse, I keep forgetting that we are a minority among muggles

[+Xitor]

A couple people have suggested using waypoints, this seems like a good idea for a local restaurants, maybe even the state, but for road trips this doesn't seem like it would work.

 

My unit supports 500 waypoints. Okay, to me, 500 user waypoints is a lot, but heck, if I go to the company site and download all the Cracker Barrel Restaurants in the US this would probably be at least a couple hundred. If vendors use this to share their information then if I simply add Cracker Barrell and Hooters I've used up all my waypoints.

 

Seems like this would better be handled with layers, or maps that you can turn on or off. So if you want to display the hooters, or Cracker barrell, or what you favorite is, you turn on that layer or map?

 

Does the Magellan map POI include these restaurants? Is this the same map I would use to view detailed street info?

 

That's funny - robertlipe, I thought you meant other people were looking for this same functionality, not actually looking for Cracker Barrell restaurants, I guess my family isn't the only that good hooked.

 

Still, seems like this should be something that individual companies could post at their sites.

 

Guess I'll have to try the Map POI. From the other post reference here, sounds like that has some limitations, but is a good start.

[robertlipe]

Does the Magellan map POI include these restaurants? Is this the same map I would use to view detailed street info?

 

As I described in the first link I cited above, certain Mapsend strains do.