Phone Numbers

Well, you have to have SOME sort of lat and long for the POI file to work.

In theory, you could make a POI file with the lat and long as zeros, but POI Loader and or your unit might choke on the file if they were all the same.

Along the same vein, you could put in bogus numbers for the lat and long, but since the locations are shown on the unit (on most units) in accordance with the proximity to your current location, sorting through them might be difficult.

I think I understand what you are trying to do, but since a GPS unit isn't a PDA, its data has to be geographically based in some way.

Thanks Motorcycle MaMa I Understand what you are saying

along the same vein, if the phone numbers are generally from teh same location (ie city) I would recommend using the City Hall coords and by using GeePeeEx Editor, you could enter the numbers under a generic name thus giving oyu sort capability and by changing the defaults allow duplicates.....might work!

I just took my personal address book that I had in a database on my computer, exported it to a CSV file, geocoded it, loaded it into Phil's GeePeeEx Editor, and saved it as a gpx file so I have my contact list as a custom POI file, complete with phone numbers that can be dialed via bluetooth from my 660.

As Motorcycle Mama mentioned, “you have to have SOME sort of lat and long for the POI file to work.”

For the C330, I created a list of Airline phone numbers (I drive a cab). You must have some coordinates in Latitude and Longitude. So for the first coordinate I used the Atlantic Ocean for example and for every phone number added I altered the latitude by one decimal. Now this won’t work with Bluetooth but it does make a nice contact list.

Hi Keith, how did you geocode it?

http://geocoder.us/

http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/map?form=address

How do you "geocode" the files? I have 900 Outlook contacts and would like to know a fast way of doing this.

I appreciate any input you can provide.

Click on the links in the post above yours. You will need to have addresses in the data.

GeePeeEx Editor can read a csv file exported from Outlook (or Outlook Express). It can use its built-in Geocoding interface to obtain the matching geographic coordinates.

The advantage over using a generic solution, is that far more information will be retained from the input data - including dialable phone numbers.

http://GeePeeEx.com/importingmulti-columncsvfiles

Cool! I didn't know that it would geocode as well. Excellent.

If you have a photo editing program of some type,to save a jpeg file, I have tried this and it will work
it takes a bit of work, but get in that program, do a add text, make your list, save it as a jpeg file, then i copied it to a s/d card and then inserted the card into the nuvi, go to your picture viewer, and there it is. I only used a couple a addresses but dont know how many you could do like this. There are no coord listes only the verbage you insert in the jpeg file.
hope that helps.

Are you saying that the JPEG viewer will display some of the Exif information from the file?

If so, which field(s) does it display? ... and which program did you use?

(This is another way of saying,
"I tried it, but can't get it to work" )

What i use is mgi photo suite, opening a blank jpeg, using the edit text button, insert the info, save it as a jpeg, then COPY it to the s/d card, and then just show it as a picture,

Does it also show up when the image is used as the initial Splash screen?

The way i see it is by going to the picture viewer on the Travel kit button on the gps, and it shows all the jpeg,and select it that way.
I did just try it and by putting the jpeg into the Garmin Jpeg file folder you can bring it up as a splash screen. Dang. I am having fun figuring this out.

I'm not having any luck with this. Could you post one of your JPEG's somewhere (or email it to me), so I can investigate from that angle?

An easier method is to use Windows Paint which is on most systems anyway. You will find it under Accessories (StartProgramsAccessoriesPaint).

You can open JPEG or BITMAPS then using the text function you can add anything you like.

You can just open PAINT drag the white box as big as you want then using the text function you can add your phone numbers then ‘Save As’ when you’re finished.

No need to go and find a photo editor.

I got them - thanks.

I see I've totally misinterpreted what you said

But at least I now know why I couldn't get my convoluted solution to work

As long as we get you straight Phil, No Problem, and i think i will try that one that Palestar mentioned. It could be as good. and thanks palestar.

Let us know how it works out for you.

I’m thinking that you may have to tweak the JPEG size since I don’t think that the picture viewer has a pan/scroll capability for all your phone numbers to fit on one ‘picture’ and be completely legible after a certain number of entries.