Creating custom poi points long/lat

Several programs will give you coords from addresses>
GPS Visualizer
MS Streets & Trips
Google Earth
and using
POI Harvester using Motel names and Zip codes

Thank you for your response. Have MS streets, don't know how to use it. However, I will try your other recommendations. Thanks again.

I tried your two addresses in the Yahoo! geocoder interface at http://www.gpsvisualizer.com (which may be the website you're remembering.
I entered:

135 Hotel Dr, Clarion PA 16214
450 west 3rd St, Mifflinville PA 18631

However

I entered the same two addresses in GeePeeEx Editor's Yahoo! Geocoder interface and got:-


41.207172,-79.37565 (Clarion, PA, 16214) Precision: City

In other words, Yahoo! will usually return a result, but you have to be careful with the interpretation of that result.

Many interfaces to the online geocoding services do not provide access to the information you require, in making that interpretation. I would say, that for use with your GPSr, that information is important!

edit
To its credit, this interface does detect the precision of the result:

http://www.poi-factory.com/node/10645

Open MS Streets & Trips
Open "Edit" > "Find" >
You can either put in "address", "Place/Data" or "lat/long"
Press "find"
Press "OK" Should take you to location:

if you need coords of that location
Open "Tools" > "Location Sensor"

Good Luck

Thanks again for a quick response. I will try your recommendation also

thank you Hornsbyp - I will try to find the best of all recommendations

Just tried it on MS trips , was perfect in direction providing exact Lat/Long when typing in Actual Hotel name with address. Had plenty of trouble locating the two addresses above prior to everyone's help... Thanks again, now I feel condfident and safe in driving there this weekend. Now I will try to upload these coordinates into my Nuvi 350. Thanks to all.

... I can locate the Mifflinville address visually in MapSource, I can set a waypoint at that address manually, but it can't find it using the "Find" search tool. It can't seem to see 450 W as a valid address. 450 E does come up. That road (Hwy 339) does change names several times in a fairly short distance from SR 339 to W 3rd St, to E 3rd St, to Mifflin Nescopeck Highway. That apparently creates some confusion for some reason.

Pretty easy to find though taking exit 242 from I-80, then turn north on 3rd St. It's only about .1 mile from the exit to the address as shown on the map.

My Nuvi 350 let me type in West 3rd street , however, it came back with E. 3rd street. Very Confusing. Checked google maps, typed in West 3 and East 3rd came back with almost same location
Thanks again.

I used Microsoft Street & Trips, located the two Super 8 Motels through above post and got the lat-long from it.. Loaded the two poi files with Garmin POI- Looks good, will test Sat- 2/16

You might also try this one:

http://www.batchgeocode.com/

You can enter one or more addresses at a time.

I tried it with the OP's addresses. It behaved identically to the gpsvisualizer interface. i.e. It returned city-centre coordinates for the first address and coordinates of a different address for the second one. Again, there was no indication that this was the case.

(The issue being, that if you know that further refinement is necessary, then that's what you'll do - but if you're just told: here is the answer, then you probably won't know that you need to.)

Took me right to both of them with the coordence with out a problem, couldnt find them on mapsourse tho.

Yes you're right, Phil. I should have mentioned I read somewhere on that site that the more information you entered (ie name, phone, etc...) the more accurate your geocoding will be. I believe it's on the downloaded template.

This is the site I use..very easy and fast!! Check it out.
http://stevemorse.org/jcal/latlon.php

I have fooled with many of these sites and in my opinion, they are just not that useful without an option to view the returned coordinates on a map or satellite view display for verification. Most of the online sites do not tell you the accuracy returned with the geocoding process. So you really have no idea if you have an exact address match or if the geocoding only returned a "center of the city" coordinate which would be miles away from the actual location.

We complain when our GPS units lead us to closed businesses or dead-end roads. But if we use these geocoding tools and do not actually verify the returned addresses for some level of accuracy, we are contributing to this problem.