Christmas is around the around the corner and Santa Claus has planned his special deliveries using Streets & Trips. But how is Santa going to keep track of pending deliveries and the ones he has completed. Using Streets & Trips that will be a very easy thing to do.

This is the map that Santa has created. It has 2 pushpin sets: Pending Delivery and Delivered. All pushpins in the map are now associated with ‘Pending Delivery’ pushpin set.

As and when a delivery is made, Santa needs to transfer the pushpins from the ‘Pending Delivery’ pushpin set to the delivered pushpin set. To do that right click on the pushpin and select its Properties.

In the Pushpin Properties window, change the Data set name to be ‘Delivered’. This will move the pushpin from one pushpin set to the other.

What if you wanted to move multiple pushpins from one pushpin set to the other. You will not be able to select multiple pushpins from the map but you can do this from the Pushpin set properties window. Right click on the ‘Pending Delivery’ Pushpin set and select Properties. The pushpin set properties window will open. Now select the ‘Matching’ tab. You will be shown a list of pushpin that belong to ‘Pending Delivery’ pushpin set. Select the pushpin that has been delivered and then right click on the selected pushpins and select ‘Cut’

Tip: Use combinations of Ctrl/Shift keys to multi select the pushpins from the list

And then click the <OK> button on the pushpin set properties window. Now right click on the ‘Delivered’ pushpin set and select ‘Properties’. The pushpin set properties window will open. Now select the ‘Matching’ tab. You will be shown a list of pushpin that belong to ‘Delivered’ pushpin set. Right click on the list and select ‘Paste’

By this way you can transfer multiple pushpin sets from one pushpin set to the other.

Most of us are familiar with the “road hit detect” feature in Streets & Trips.  If you zoom down to street level you can click on a road and you can see what the street address is for that location.

There is a lesser known feature called “area hit detect” which can be very useful for knowing about the location hierarchy for areas other than roads (like parks or when you are zoomed too far out to see roads).

In past versions up to  2008 - “area hit detect” was done by double-clicking on a blank space on the map. 

In versions after 2008 – double-clicking was added as a new way to zoom in the map.  Although this improved the general usability of the software – we lost “area hit detect” in 2009.   All this to say that it is back in 2010 using Ctrl+shift+double-click.

Now you can always know what Country, State, City, and County you are clicking on!

You may have heard rumors that the Microsoft AutoRoute product was dead but apparently it was just hibernating.

What is AutoRoute?  It is trip planning and navigation software much like Microsoft Streets & Trips but with European maps.  In fact, it contains maps for 43 countries! It will be available in 3 languages – EN-UK, French, and German.

The last version of AutoRoute was released in 2007 so there are 3 years of new features available in 2010.

Here is how 2010 compares to 2007:

Availability date:

For download: NOW (links at bottom of this post)
Avail in stores: TBD
Download additional UK Points of Interest here.

Trial files for AutoRoute 2010 (International English version) are ready for downloading.

Instructions:

1. Please download ALL three files listed below to a directory on your machine, making sure to put them all in the same location.
2. Once the downloads are complete, run the setup (setup.exe) file and the installation of your AutoRoute 2010 free evaluation will begin.
3. Note: The download files are large, so use a high-speed internet connection.

• AR2010 pt1
• AR2010 pt2
• AR2010 setup

NEW --> DOWNLOAD THE AR2010 Megafile HERE - AR2010_POI_Files_From_MSDownloads.zip (7.4MB)

Import Data Wizard has always been a killer feature in Streets and Trips that differentiated this software from the rest. Streets & Trips users have taken advantage of this feature in the past and have created custom data and overlay them on the map which they use for business or travel purposes. From Streets & Trips 2010 this feature got a little more exciting by the addition of the show/hide pushpin set feature. Now users can import multiple collections into a single est file and also have the ability to turn on/off the sets that they want to see on the map.

Here is how to import additional POI collections into your existing map file:

1. If you do not have Streets & Trips 2010 then please download the 60 day trial version from here and then launch the program.  

2. Open the .est file that you use for your trips or business

3. Go to the DiscoveryOwners.com POI downloads page. And select ‘Text Only’ from the dropdown list

3. Then the page would refresh and will display the list of data that is available as shown below

4. Select the zip file from the download column against the collection that you want to download and save the file on to your local disk.

5. Now go to the file saved location and unzip the downloaded file.

6. In Streets & Trips application, select ‘Import data wizard’ from the ‘Data’ menu or press Ctrl+I to invoke the Import Data Wizard. Then select the text file that you just downloaded and click <Open>

7. Once you have selected the text file, Streets & Trips will automatically select the separator character (ie, tab, semicolon or comma) that is appropriate for the file.  Normally you can just click <Next> on the dialog below:

8.  If there are valid location headings found then Streets & Trips will match them accordingly to the data types if not you will need to match them based on the data. Below shows an import that needs some manual column matching: 

9. To match column headings with the data types, simply select the data types from the dropdown list and match them against your data. And then Click <Finish>

Tips:

a. Select data type as ‘Name’ to show the POI / business name as the title of the Pushpin balloon in Streets & Trips
b. If you want any additional info to be shown in the title of the balloon then select ‘Name2’ as the data type against that field
c. If the source text file does not have a column heading (it says F1, F2, F3 etc) then type a more descriptive heading in this screen.
d. You can select an appropriate pushpin icon to use for the set or import/create your own custom icon.  (see post on Using Custom Pushpin Icons in your Maps).
e. For additional free POI collections visit: POI-Factory.com (registration required to download).

Now Streets & Trips Import data wizard will import the data and will display in in the map and will also create a Pushpin set in the ‘Legends and Overview’ pane. Right-click on the pushpin set to view properties and all pushpin management options that are available for you.

Is there anyone left that doesn’t already know about the all the great points of interest files (aka Map Overlay files) available from the folks at DiscoveryOwners.com?

Well, they’ve been busy this fall working on a better way to access these files.   You will definitely want to bookmark these pages as you will want to return regularly to check for updates.

No more horizontal scrolling! :-)

1. Visit the new Points Of Interest Download List here (or click on the image below).

2. Use the new dropdown menu to choose your software product or Text files (recommended for 2010 users)

3.  Download the new or updated POI collection (a zip file) and unzip it.

This is a huge improvement and makes accessing these collections much easier!

Related links:

• Original DiscoveryOwners.com/cginfolinks.htm page
• New page – listed alphabetically
• New page – listed newest first
• ST2010 - DiscoveryOwners Mega File containing all the collections in one est file (UPDATED Nov 16 2009).

Did you know you can easily import points of interest into your Streets & Trips map?  There are many internet sources for collections of POI.  One popular (and free) website which shares out such information is DiscoveryOwners.com/cginfolinks.htm.

There are over 200 pushpin sets yours to freely download and import into Streets & Trips.  You can also create your own custom icons for these collections.

Now here is the good news…all the work has been done for you!  Marvin from LaptopGPSWorld has shared this all-in-one POI mega-file.

Download it from here: http://www.laptopgpsworld.com/microsoft-streets-trips/2595-mega-file-pushpin-collections-truckers-rvers-other-travelers.html or

from the S&T team skydrive.  (UPDATED - NOV 11, 2009)

Note: this file will only work with the new Streets & Trips 2010 version.

The mega file is the result of a collaborative effort and would not be made possible without the contributors at DiscoveryOwners and all others involved.

Thank you! Thank you!  I believe this file is a MUST HAVE for all travelers.