Streets & Trips Space

Microsoft Streets & Trips has partnered with Entertainment Online to present valuable special offers in many towns across the United States and Canada. These deals are available to you across a variety of categories, including restaurants, hotels, special events, retailers and service providers.

With the high price of fuel and the less than stellar economy, I love getting discounts and saving money wherever I travel.   When we first started working on this feature I was really wondering if there would be enough coupons available to make it worthwhile.  I had no idea how many thousands of coupons there were all over the US and Canada.  I found that browsing through the coupons in Streets & Trips and seeing their locations visually on the map is a much better experience than flipping through a physical entertainment book.

If you’ve never used Entertainment Online coupons, Streets & Trips makes it easy for you to sign up for a free trial membership. If you already use Entertainment Online coupons, you can renew your membership directly from within Streets & Trips.

Streets & Trips gives you the ability to see which Entertainment Online coupons are available for places within the geographical area that you specify. The coupons are displayed as pushpins on the map.

You can easily print the Entertainment Online coupons directly from Streets & Trips to take with you on the road so that you can save money on restaurants, hotels, and more.

Some like the speaking of street names in the spoken instructions others do not.

Some like the application to automatically re-route other do not want the original route to ever be changed.

The new Options dialog will keep everyone happy:

This is one of the first things you need to know about the 2009 version.  I was asked about this several times at the FCMA convention.

Below is a comparison between the new 2009 S&T toolbar (on top) and the toolbar from 2008 (very similar to 2007, 2006 etc).  The toolbar has been cleaned up and the buttons have doubled in size (very helpful for use while in vehicle). 

So where are the Pan and Select buttons?  They are gone! And that is a good thing.  There is no longer a need to click up on the toolbar each time you want to change tools now use LEFT mouse button to drag/pan and RIGHT click to select/draw a rectangle for zooming in or creating an AVOID AREA.

Zoom in on a specific area

1. On the map, position your mouse pointer at the upper-left corner of the area you want to zoom in on.

2. Right-click the map and drag the pointer diagonally until you've drawn a box around the area you want to enlarge.

3. To quit drawing, release the mouse button.

   If the box you've drawn isn't quite where you want it, click outside the box to make it disappear, and then redraw it.

4. Click inside the box.

Note  You can also zoom in on any area of the map by double-clicking the area and shift+double-clicking zooms out the map.

This week a few of us from the team are in Minneapolis, MN at the Family Motor Coach Association (FMCA) Convention.  It has been great to be a part of this event.  I was able to speak on a panel discussing PC Navigation software and take part in a very fruitful Q&A session that lasted a couple hours. 

3000 lucky attendees got their own copy of a 60 day trial of S&T09...fresh off the burners.  Many folks had already installed and used the new version before visiting our booth.

The feedback we have received from the FMCA attendee on the new version so far has been very positive.  I will be sharing for on features in future posts.  Most of these folks are very experienced hard core users who use it daily for months at a time logging thousands of miles in their motor coaches with S&T helping them get to their destinations along the way.

Here is a snapshot of the Streets booth before the crowds came in.  Once the doors opened I talked non-stop for 8 hours.

Someone was asking about creating multiple waypoints in Streets & Trips / MapPoint and wanted to know what the maximum possible number of waypoint one could have for a route.

Good question.   I wrote a script to create a humongous route to see if I could find out.

After testing this for some time I believe the answer is this:

• There is no hard-coded limit.  We never show a message box saying "Unable to add waypoint.  You have exceeded the max. number of stops".
• As you add more waypoints to a route getting directions can become very resource intensive.  To optimize your stops can take even longer.
• I created a route with about 65,000+ stops and it worked but I had to leave it running overnight before the route appeared!! :-)

The resulting test file was very difficult to work with.  Even scrolling through the route planner plan brought my machine to its knees. So, yes it may be POSSIBLE to create a route that includes every city east of the Mississippi I wouldn't recommend it (but it was fun trying it out).

Ouch!!

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/359497_bus18.html

Moral of the story: don't rely on any GPS 100% or when riding on a bus, always recline your seat back as far as it will go.

[Update:  The Amazon sale is now over but watch for deals at other online retailers.]

For a limited time Amazon appears to be offering Streets & Trips with GPS for only $49.95!!

This is a killer deal and by far the best deal I've ever seen on the product.  Snatch this up!

[Link to Amazon site]

Microsoft Streets & Trips 2008 with Connected Services is also reduced by almost $70 to $89.99.

Connected Services includes everything in the GPS version in addition to MSN Direct services which provides Gas Prices, Traffic Flow data, traffic incident reports and construction in near real-time without the need of an Internet connection.

[Link to Amazon for Connected Services]

Here is a helpful tip that many folks have asked me about.  It is all documented in the help file but who reads that, right? :-)

Note: This applies to all versions of Streets & Trips.

Out of the box when you launch S&T - you will get the default North America Map View:

The application reads a file called "New North America Map.stt".  You can replace this file with a custom map view that is geographically more relevant to your location.  For example, if I want to show the New York area with pushpins showing all the Wall-Mart locations (download Wallmart zip file from http://www.discoveryowners.com/cginfolinks.htm).

Load the map file and get the zoom and position exactly how you want it for the default.

Step 1: Choose File | Save as... "Map Template (*.stt)

Step 2: Save in the required location (C:\Program Files\Microsoft Streets & Trips\Templates\)

Step 3:  Overwrite the existing "New North America Map.stt".  Optionally, you may choose to make a copy of the original template file under another name if you ever want to go back to it.

Step 4:  Confirm (click 'Yes') to overwrite existing file.

That's it.  Now try it out.  Whenever you launch the application you will see your custom map.  How cool!

Wow. It is hard to believe that the Consumer Electronics Show wrapped up over a week ago already. I'm still recovering! It is a well known fact that attending CES can be often more effective than a flu-shot. You spend a week talking and shaking hands with people from around the world and then return home to find you've caught some virulent airborne contagion that will wipe you out for another week. Once you recover from your respitory illness, you are never sick for the rest of the year.  (*fingers crossed*)

In the future, I will be blogging about what we've been working on for Streets & Trips 2009 such as the much needed enhancements in the User Interface to make the application easier to use,  additions to the MSN Direct Services for the Connected Services edition, and improvement to the search functionality, just to name a few.

On a side note, I was blown away by the number of folks that told me they still use Pocket Streets and could pull out their  mobile device and show it to me installed.  We haven't shipped that since MapPoint 2006 and yet it clearly met a need for a certain niche of users.  A couple years back there was a business decision made to focus on offering a free connected mobile solution (More info at: http://www.livesearchmobile.com/ or Direct download of Live Search for Windows Mobile --> here).

More to come...thanks for your patience.

Each month we publish a free construction update for both MapPoint and Streets & Trips.  This update is available to all users of:

• Streets & Trips 2008, 2007, 2006, 2004
• MapPoint 2004, 2006

Periodically, we hear of issues with this file so drop me a comment if you have questions.

The amazingly prolific blogger Marvin Hlavac has started yet another forum for the specific niche of GPS navigation on laptops, TabletPCs and UMPCs.  Join up and contribute to the discussions.

There is a forum specifically for Microsoft Streets & Trips that is sure to have all the latest discoveries and tips for the product.

Hey - Marvin - thanks for all your dedication to helping folks with GPS navigation.  I'd like to see some RSS links on the site.

The Connected Services edition of Streets and Trips is the premium version of the 2008 release.  Travelers using this version have all the features of the  GPS version + a MSN Direct receiver.  The MSN Direct receiver allows you to stay connected via the FM band for up-to-date traffic flow information, traffic incidents, road construction, and gas prices.   The MSN Direct service is free for 1 year with the purchase of Streets & Trips Connected Services edition.

If you planned on buying the GPS version you are likely to pay $80.00 [Amazon link].  This is a great deal as the GPS version used to retail for $129.00 in previous years.  To get all the goodness of the Connected Services edition will need to shell out $150.00 [Amazon link].

Is it worth the extra ~$70?

Think of it this way...using the CS gas prices feature I could save $0.10/gallon to fill up my 15 gallon tank.  I fill up weekly.

$0.10 * 13 gallon tank * 52 weeks = $67.60

Not bad?  Now factor in the added value of knowing the traffic situation on the major highways, the ability to make better route choices based on traffic incidents and construction.  The confidence gained with this added info is also worth something in my opinion.

Note: Drivers who are outside the MSN Direct coverage areas may want to stick to the GPS version this round.