New GPS Visualizer features: address mapping & GPX creation

I have a few new GPS Visualizer features to announce:

* CONVERSION TO GPX. There's always been a little-noticed "convert a
GPS file to text" link that takes your data -- in any one of the many
supported file formats -- and converts it to comma-separated or
tab-delimited text. Now that same program can also create GPX files.
(GPX is a standard XML format for storing GPS data.) Here's the link:
http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/convert


* ADDRESS MAPPING. If you want to plot a waypoint in the United States
but don't have its latitude and longitude, you can supply a street
address. (It also works for postcodes in the UK, but you have to be
sure to include a "country" field with "uk" on that row.) Here's the
form that's designed for entering street addresses:
http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/map?form=addresses

This new feature is very useful if you're shopping for real estate
and want to make a map of all the properties you're interested in.
(If you happen to be in Portland, OR, ask me about how you can easily
make maps from RMLS search results.) The address mapping feature
should work well for a list of garage/estate sales, too.

By the way, many thanks to the people who set up the Web Service at
http://geocoder.us/ which makes this possible.


* AUTOMATIC SCALE LENGTH. Before, the scale on a GPSV map defaulted
to half the distance covered by your data. While this was nice
aesthetically, it wasn't very helpful, and few people ever noticed
that they could type in a more sensible size, like "1 mile." So I
finally fixed it so if the scale says "auto," it calculates a sensible
and round number (1 km, 5 km, etc.) based on the size of your map.


* JPEGs. Okay, this isn't completely new; I announced it last month,
but it bears repeating. GPS Visualizer's "localizer" program, which
formerly was useful only for stripping down SVGs into a more portable
form, can now convert your SVGs to "flat" JPEG images. Frankly, they
don't look quite as nice as if you just do a screen shot, but if your
map is bigger than your screen, it's a lot easier.


If you haven't even heard of GPS Visualizer before, please drop by and
check it out at http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/. It's free, platform-
independent (it only requires Adobe's free SVG Viewer plug-in), and it
supports many, many GPS data file formats. And now street addresses.


Adam Schneider
adamschneider.net



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