Make your own POI with Google Earth

I have used Google Earth, and for some things it works fine. In one case I zoomed in onto the roof of a gas station that was a scheduled stop for a "Poker Run" my riding club was having. Got the exact coordinates and fed them into my Zumo. During the run, the location was off by about 250-300 yards.
There are other good ways to convert an address or list of addresses to coordinate info. These have been mentioned here before, but I'll list a couple. You can find more info by Googling "geocoding". Check out:
http://www.batchgeocode.com/
http://gpsvisualizer.com/geocoder/
also, if you have coordinates in a different format than what you need for your GPSr, you can try:
http://www.csgnetwork.com/gpscoordconv.html

Just always be sure you use the long/lat coordinates in DECIMAL format. Google Earth
can be set to give decimal instead of deg/min/sec format.

Google Earth ranks right up there with sliced bread. I use it mostly to scout out places that I want to visit prior to my arrival. I can see how curvy or steep a road is. I wouldn't want to live without it anymore. Every now and then I load up a route from my GPS into GE and fly along the path. That way you can show other where you've been.

I couldn't agree more, except...Certain parts of the country are not detailed enough to show an exact entry way, or street, or...But for the price it is a extremely useful tool.

how do create your owm poi using google earth. I am very naive when it comes to this stuff. Also how can I load up poi from my gps and track it on google earth.

Have you read through the FAQ? It has many helpful information and hints.

Thanks. I am new to geocoding. Have used a Garmin GPS12 in the past and found that Microsoft Streets and Trips to be dead on. Haven't had a chance to check the accuracy of Google earth but disappointed to hear that it can be off by that much. Then again, arn't most of these programs figuring addesses off of a formula that takes a street number as a percentage of the range of numbers on that street and picks the corresoponding point? I was under the impression that they don't really know the exact location for each address from a seperately determined position fix. If the percentage location is the general case for finding the position, the most methods will be off by some degree. It is just a matter of which one has the best forumula, Me thinks.

Read my posts on discrepancies between different geocoders and how these geocode are calculated here . We need to understand that when our GPSr is off by some distance using the coordinates from Google Earth, it doesn't imply that Google earth is wrong.

When I create POIs, I use several geocoding sources to cross-reference, including Google Earth for 'visual' verification. However, I use MapSource for my final validation because that's the same map your Garmin unit uses. So if I enter the coordinates into MapSource and it looks 'off' (i.e. not adjacent to the street), then your GPS will be off as well. When this occurs, I use Google Earth to identify its relative location to surrounding streets and move the POI to match its location to the streets in MapSource.

some detail information or sample would help

Have you actually read through the FAQs? Because csv format is explained in great details here. If you still need samples, download any of the csv POI files available and open it with a notepad.

The gpx format is Xml document, so it is self-describing. If you are familar with working with an Xml, then you should have no problems creating gpx-based POI.

I'm new to all of this, but was able to download Google Earth and set it to decimal. However I notice that when I select a place and Right Click and select properties, the Latitude and Longitude it gives is limited to 4 decimal places. I've noticed in many of the POIs that they typically have more decimal places - is this important? If so, is there a way of setting Google Earth to give the greater accuracy?

Thank you "The Traveler" for replying, and I realy understand that people should read first, But some people do not have a clue what XML, take it easy

It's great that I found Garmin chose to use this easy, human-freindly format, but is it the defacto in all devices,e.g Can I copy a POI from TOM TOM to Garmin

BUT you must convert the ov2 (TomTom) file to a csv (Garmin) file first!

ML

Great Tip, Thanks!