Mastering Google Maps

[td_ref]

If its too good to be true, it usually is...

believe or not, ridiculously low price is now how China take on the world, ethics not assure.

[euphonius]

TD is right. You'll be blown away by the prices of a lot of stuff in Taobao. Bluetooth headsets are all selling for $200 or more in the US, but they are all made here in China. Why be surprised if they are selling for $40 in Taobao? Enjoy it while you are here...

cheers!

[euphonius]

OK, one more post on this. If you'd like to read more about the Gigatron bluetooth headset that's selling for 268 RMB in Taobao, I've posted the user manual on my iDisk. You can download it from there, if you like. The file is called Motorcycle bluetooth-ok.doc.

Seems like the real deal, though I'm curious whether/how it would link to bluetooth headsets from other manufacturers.

cheers

[corporal_clegg]

Thanks for the post ChinaV.

I have a simple problem if anyone would care to help me:
I've made a small route for a little one day dash out to the mountains and back. Doing A to B and dragging points is not really appropriate here because its a circle so I add destination by destination. When I export to kml and open the file in another program (orux/google earth) I only get A to B and nothing on b,c,d... Has anybody solved this problem already? The thought of making each route (a-b, b-c, c-d...) individually and adding the coordinates to a master kml makes me feel sick even for a little 600km+ route, imagine for a serious route. There must be another way.

edit: there no breaks in the coordinate list, it just seems to be shortened to A-B

[ChinaV]

http://www.elsewhere.org/journal/gmaptogpx/

Convert to GPX, open in Google Earth, save track as KML

Cheers!
ChinaV

Thanks for the post ChinaV.

I have a simple problem if anyone would care to help me:
I've made a small route for a little one day dash out to the mountains and back. Doing A to B and dragging points is not really appropriate here because its a circle so I add destination by destination. When I export to kml and open the file in another program (orux/google earth) I only get A to B and nothing on b,c,d... Has anybody solved this problem already? The thought of making each route (a-b, b-c, c-d...) individually and adding the coordinates to a master kml makes me feel sick even for a little 600km+ route, imagine for a serious route. There must be another way.

edit: there no breaks in the coordinate list, it just seems to be shortened to A-B

[td_ref]

Hi Mr.V, haven't seem you for awhile, finished some good ride?
For some other reasons, I can't get a good bike for now, but a Volkswagen instead.

[felix]

Why not just make points A and B you start and finish and just drag points like normal? Works just as well for a loop!

[slabo]

Why not just make points A and B you start and finish and just drag points like normal? Works just as well for a loop!

Because that only gives you points A & B .. whereas your original route had multiple destinations, and driving directions all the way. If you export to kml, you only get driving directions upto your first destination.

Take for example this route >> Kunming>Deqen>Litang>Ordos>Beijing
Now to get a kml file, you append &output=kml to the url above. That works fine, but with multiple destinations you only get A and B.. Why? Good question, google??... Seems ok to create gpx file, need to test on my phone later..
Thanks ChinaV, gold as usual.

[slabo]

Looks promising. Another problem with exporting kml from gmaps is that you get only the points with driving directions, so you end up with a list of checkpoints instead of detail route to follow. Bookmark Mr. V provided exports all points, but somehow I can't get oruxmaps to load it. Tried with shorter routes, still getting a not so useful error message "Error loading route!" .. I guess I'd better take this up on oruxmaps

[ChinaV]

The point Felix is making is that instead of making destinations A B C D, just make A to B and use the drag/re-route feature to make destination points. That keeps everything in a single kml file just fine, but can be a bit difficult when you're making really large routes. There is a limit on how many re-route points you can make...I think it's like 15 or so.

If you have a valid kml or gpx file from using http://www.elsewhere.org/journal/gmaptogpx/ and it's not working in Orux, run it through http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/ that should clean up the xml.

Cheers!
ChinaV

P.S. Hi td_ref, I took a time out from the site for a while, needed to focus on business and other life matters. Still riding as much as I can.