We're taking a trip overseas this year, and I'm in full planning nerd mode. I won't have cell phone or 3G service where we'll be going, so I'm trying to look at ways to utilize a mobile device for helping with directions and routes when we will only have occassional wifi access.
I've been tinkering with Maps 5.0 on Android, especially its caching functionality. The caching seems to work pretty well. I think if I spend some time roaming around in google maps on the device with wifi access, it will work well when I dont have wifi.
The problem is in geotagging and routing. While I'm offline wandering around a city, I won't be able to look up the place we're headed to, or get routing information to guide me to the location. So I need some system of locally stored/cached items that have longitude/latitude data with them, and it would be sweet loveliness if I could also have a locally stored/cached routes for our plan for the day.
I was so close with built in Google Maps features of MyMaps for routes and "starred places" for individual locations.
I am able to 'star' something on a map, and Google Maps will sometimes sort of cache my list of starred places (but not reliably caching)... But... While I search for the item by the English name, in my "Starred places" list, they tend to be listed in kanji (we're going to Japan). I can't find a way to rename a spot I have starred. That's going to really limit my ability to use this feature.
MyMaps would be perfect for planning siteseeing, except it doesn't cache at all.
i'm almost tempted to build a PhoneGap app that pulls POIs from locally stored stuff, and then invokes Maps with it. Mmmm... would I still be able to have fully functional Maps 5.0 caching? Is there a way to plop a route on it? Before I launch off on that, I'll probably poke around and see if anyone else has already coded up something.
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