---------- ---------- PC Pro Realworld Computing: Paul Lynch - PDAs

Street Pricing?

Another new release from Microsoft that will have users dancing in the streets is the free release of Pocket Automap Streets. Pstreets is a viewer for Automap map files that users will be able to create from a future release of automap; Microsoft supply forty maps of cities in the United States of America that can be downloaded to an HPC. When the release that supports Pockets Streets is available, users will be able to create maps for any area of the United States, to the degree of detail that they wish. I took a look at the supplied San Francisco map, which takes up 272K. Other maps range in size between 180K (Honolulu) and 581K (Boston). Although the maps can be downloaded directly to an HPC using Pocket Internet Explorer, installing Pocket Automap Streets requires a desktop machine with HPC Explorer installed.



The Streets of San Francisco
The Streets of San Francisco

One tip to make the maps slightly easier to read is to set the background from grey to white. Zooming and scrolling the map is controlled from the tool bar, and seems easy enough. The level of detail is enough to show most, but certainly not all, streets. All major grid streets will be present, but some of the minor side alleys aren't there. The maps contain a large number of points of interest, which includes hotels, restaurants and museums. These are shown on the map as icons in the closer degrees of zoom. Clicking anywhere on the map will show a text label for the point of interest, or nearest street. For a visitor from Europe, the maps are very firmly car-centric. Don't expect to find train and underground information, even for such a well served city as San Francisco.

You don't get intelligent route finding, or detailed information on any of the points of interest. For that, you need both a laptop with the full grown version of AutoRoute and a Newton with one of the few guide book applications.



There's a Hilton Street...
There's a Hilton Street...



...but no Hilton Hotel
...but no Hilton Hotel

The most useful feature of Pstreets is the find panel. Two different find panels are available; one for street and one for points of interest. Searching for Hilton, for example, finds one street name and no hotels. Most street names are present in the index, which makes finding your way around town to a strange location very easy. But finding a place is like shooting craps; sometimes you get lucky. For example, finding the major hotels and restaurants around the Moscone conference centre in San Francisco was easy; most of the significant places were there, and most of the streets. But the (relatively major) street in front of the Moscone doesn't show on the map, and neither does the Moscone Center itself! Even such major tourist attractions as the Exploratorium and Fisherman's Wharf are not present.



The big blank area at the bottom is the Moscone Center
The big blank area at the bottom is the Moscone Center

Despite the flaws and omissions, Pocket Automap Streets is a must have application for Windows CE. The viewer is great, and the maps are well detailed and a fine compromise between information and space.



Words and design by:
Paul Lynch
Last updated: July 30, 1997

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