GPS Insight Blog

Here is a link to our new Map Book Tool.

http://widgets.yahoo.com/widgets/map-book-page-locator

Thanks to some hard work from our staff, we have created a new tool for anyone who wishes to use it. As I mentioned in a previous post regarding map books, we have started integrating map books into GPS Insight. We have constructed a freely available “map book tool” which allows customers to enter an address, and it will tell you which map book, page, and “quadrant” (e.g. AF-23) the address exists in.

Here is a picture of the tool when you start it (you can ask us to add your favorite map book), and will enter 1611 E. Bonanza, Las Vegas, NV into it to see what happens when we press the “find” magnifying glass:

Again, here is the widget link, but in the meantime, you can install the Yahoo Widget Engine.

Here is the result in our tool:

Note that this tool tells you which map book, which map page, and which part of the page (C4) to look for this address. This is useful for dispatch personnel who can quickly paste an address into our tool, then tell their drivers where to look in their map book for that address.

Here is the address in Google Earth:

Now I can overlay our map book page (for our internal use only — we can’t distribute these as it would be copyright infringement, but you can construct your own & there are instructions in the map book article link above):

You can see that when we overlay the map page 45 from the Yellow1 Map Book for Las Vegas into Google Earth, the address is BARELY inside Column C, Row 4:

Zooming down we see just how accurate the GPS Insight Map Book Tool is. I will place a new placemark (add->placemark) just on the other side of the “border” from C4 to D5, and right-click/Copy that placemark:

Now “process” the Google Earth Placemark in the Map Book Took by right clicking as such:

Now the Map Book Tool shows Column D, Row 5 instead of C4:

We are in the process of adding numerous map books to this product, and will make them available as soon as we can to help people easily find map book/page/quadrants in most major metro areas with Atlas Map Books. This tool will be available immediately on Widgets.Yahoo.com . We already have released a Widget to show the Arizona Department of Transportation cameras here.

GPS Insight is committed to making life easier for our customers and that includes prospective customers. This widget is free, and we invite you to use it. Search for GPS Insight on widgets.yahoo.com and download both of them (it will be a few days until the map book widget is available).

Of course we want users of the free Widgets to become aware of the GPS Insight Vehicle Tracking product and contact us about how we can help their company, which is good for our marketing, but it’s fun, and helpful to our customers. Enjoy & let us know which map books you want added next.

Thanks,

Rob.