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I think some of you are being a touch obtuse. For those of you who don't need a Sat Nav to find your way to the bathroom in the morning, can ignore the advice.
For those unfamiliar with communicating with human beings, it requires a different method from what is needed to communicate with a machine (for the time being at least). It goes like this:
"Hi Rob, how do we get to Aish House from Portsmouth".
Don't you have a Sat Nav?"
"Yes but it doesn't recognise your address"
"Ok, take the M27 and A31 towards Bournemouth. About 4 miles past Ringwood take the A348 Ringwood Road through Ferndown, continue on this road for about 4 miles, crossing over a river, before reaching the outskirts of Poole. Go directly acoss the X road of the A348 and A341 Wimbourne Road. Follow the A348 directly across two small roundabouts and at the third, bear left (actually straight on), onto the B3068, Ringwood Road. Take the 4th on the right, Manningsheath Road, NOT into Broom Road (as this is blocked for access). Take the next right into Broom road and you will see us in the large green corrigated metal clad office on the corner".
When lost it is usually sufficient to stop and ask "Excuse me, can you tell me if I'm on Ringwood Road?" or "Can you tell me where Broom Road is?"
OS = Ordinanve Survey. I would expect most countries have an equivalent system based on a Mercator projection. The UK one is base ona datum point which ties it to a lat/long position, south west of the Scilly Isles. Ireland have their own grid system with a different datum as will Germany, USA and as does Australia and New Zealand.
One of my former places of work is given by 50°51'24.00"N 1° 5'33.35"W. It would be a lot easier to enter 463985,106753 (accurate to 1m) or alternatively SU63980675 (same system but uses letter designation to define initial 100km x 100km square, accurate to 10m). It isn't difficult and there are plenty of library routines available to do the conversions.
As for non-standard addresses (your words initially, not mine). There are a hell of a lot of them. They are as defined in the Post Office database which Navigon presumably use.
Say you use the off airport car parks at Gatwick, Russ Hill Hotel, for example. Enter "Charlwood" and "Russ Hill". Navigon then gives the option of "Russ Hill Cottages" or "Russ Hill Road". So it looks like it sort of deals with house names but just very badly. Fortunately the post code does take you close to the destination. Curiously the machine says that there is no parking in the area (this is supposed to be a car park).
Anyway thanks for the twitter email address. Twittering is as far as I know is what birds do. They appear not to want anyone to know about this. For fans of the HHGTTG, the Customer Services department is in the basement, where the stairs and the light bulbs have been removed, behind the locked door marked beware of the leopard.
Joined: Aug 31, 2005 Posts: 15145 Location: Bradford, West Yorkshire
Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2011 12:43 am Post subject:
I think the house-name / industrial estate issues have been (and may always be?) issues with satnav's for a long time. Getting an address from a contact on a phone is relatively new in comparison and, if it's any consolation, I'm not aware of any Android or iPhone navigation apps that do it particularly well. I think it will only improve once we start pestering them to make it use postcode as it's first port of call when using the phone's address book. Mass email, anyone?!
Joined: Aug 21, 2005 Posts: 1761 Location: Kent, England
Posted: Thu Sep 01, 2011 8:18 am Post subject:
I am going to continue to be be obtuse, because I am not sharp enough to be acute.
Whether we like it or not all mass market sat navs are made for mass markets, i.e. the world. They are not made just to fit the peculiarities of a small densely populated island situated just off the European mainland. The fact that none of them do what you want them to do may just be explained by that simple fact.
And now not only do you want it to use post codes, which as I have already explained, many other countries don't have and in those that do they often cover much larger areas than ours (USA, France) and are therefore of limited use. But now you think they should use our OS system, and if they don't they should have one of their own they can use.
Well AFAIK many other countries don't have those either, and if they do they are not well known or understood by the populace. France might have its Michelin maps or USA its Rand McNalleys, but as far as I am aware neither of them have our system of detailed grid references. And if they do they are not as well established in people's minds as ours; I have never heard people in those countries use them to describe where something is to the accuracy we can (other than maybe the military).
I really think this thread has run out of steam now. I think we have established that Navigon does not do what you want, so then maybe you should try others. My Sygic system works reasonably well with post codes but still does not use them when looking at contacts. I also find Google Maps, Nav, Satellite and Street View useful to supplement my system. Between them all I always manage to find where I am looking for. In fact it never ceases to amaze me just how well these systems work in something I can carry in my pocket
But I still carry a road map in the car, just in case. _________________ Peter
HTC Sensation
Sygic GPS for Europe (No more TT "support"!)
Copilot for USA
Bury CC9060 bluetooth car kit & Brodit mount
Fair enough bur as it happened I didn't actually raise the point about using lat/longs etc. I really don't care what method is used to determine the location just as long as it is reliable and accurate to a reasonable degree.
I think you will find Universal Transverse Mercator grids systems used all over the world - I've used German maps equivalent to our OS types.
Joined: Apr 04, 2006 Posts: 10118 Location: Bexhill, South Sussex, UK
Posted: Sat Sep 03, 2011 8:37 am Post subject:
But the problem is not with Transverse Mercator or OSGB, whoever they might be, but with navigation to Contacts which may or may not use UK Postcodes, which in turn may or may not be accurate enough for you .
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