DefiningYourHome sent us some great travel tips for putting travel information on your iPod touch and leaving the loose papers at home:

Pack Information on an iPod Touch

Her notes are geared towards using a MacBook but I think I'm going to give them a try with my PC next month.

Thanks Freda.

I just splurged and bought an ipod touch for this reason. It's an awesome tool.

There is a free app which is similar to the Air Sharing one she talks about, very simple to use.

Looks good; I'll need to figure out the variations for the PC.

Hi Freda, excellent! I used air sharing on my trip last year and also found it very useful. It's been so long that I have since forgotten how I did it and so I was so happy to read about your Travel Notes. I didn't know about creating walking maps or saving my e-mails as pdf. I really like the follow along graphics you posted with your easy step by step instructions. I'm going to try to save my trip e-mails using your instructions and also create walking maps.

Thank you very much.

Glad you find the article helpful!

Thanks,
Freda (aka Cameron)

I'm bringing this topic up since I've made some good use of the tips. Some things I've figured out about using Air Sharing, if I have it right:

The IP address that they assign only works on the desktop if the Touch is on, with Air Sharing open and making a wi-fi connection. Since I don't have wi-fi at home, I had hoped that I could put some useful documents on the server from home and then retrieve them (and save them for offline use) on the Touch once it connected to wi-fi.

I hoped to do things like rename folders on the Touch offline, but that needs to be done with wi-fi.

So if I find pages at home that I want to put on the Touch, I was thinking: save it to a file, e-mail it to myself, save it to my hard drive at work, and save it to the IP server when I've brought the iPod to work? I have access to a work network drive from home, so I could simplify it that much; I guess I could also use a flash drive.

Here are some areas where I need to learn more about using it in a PC environment: there are some ready-made maps that I could right-click and save as a JPEG, and those worked fine. Google Maps have been more of a problem; I've used the Mail link above the map to e-mail a link to myself, but when I open it I've had problems getting the graphics to appear on the Touch. If I've saved the page as .htm, the graphics don't appear; I've tried file extensions .png and .jpg on the names; the file type seems to be recognized but they're left hanging when I try to open the files on the Touch, and if I click on them on the desktop (on the IP address page) I get an error message. Using .doc makes the graphics go haywire.

This is of most interest for a map I've made of restaurants in the area of Paris where I'll be staying. For walking directions, I can use the standard Google Maps app on the Touch to ask for them while I'm in wi-fi, and keep the map open (or even my last use of the app if I power the iPod off until I need the map) while I go out of wi-fi. Some information I've gathered is about the plentiful wi-fi in parks in Paris, and to know not to use the network called FREE, but rather Orange.

Don't forget, you can download a free ereader app from BN.com onto your IPad. You can download all the ebooks you want to take on your trip. No more bulky books taking up space in your carryon.

quote:

The IP address that they assign only works on the desktop if the Touch is on, with Air Sharing open and making a wi-fi connection.

If you have a Mac, you can create your own wireless network between the computer and the iPod Touch. You do it by can do it by going to the Airport icon in your menu bar and choosing "Create Network." That lets you communicate wirelessly between the computer and the Touch even if you don't have a regular network running in your location. I don't know whether there is any similar way of doing that with Windows.

Google Maps are a bit more problematical as Andrew says. I haven't done this for a while so my memory is a bit hazy, but I think what I did was to use screen capture to get an image of the map (sometimes I had to get two images) and then paste it into a Word file which I put on the Touch.

- Roz

Andrew - I came across a different map application for the iPhone/iTouch - OffMaps. It uses OpenMaps instead of Google for maps so I don't know if it has all the Google features but it is designed to be used off-line and might be worth looking at.

You can always save a Google map (or any other image from an app) on your iTouch just by by taking a screenshot: press at the same time both the Home button at the bottom of the screen and the Sleep/Wake button on the top edge. The screen will flash and you'll hear a shutter click; the image is saved to your Photos app.

Not as good as what OffMaps seems to offer, but handy nevertheless.

As for text on webpages, the screengrab gets a pretty small image, but you can enlarge it enough to read adequately for a quick reference. For smoother, more extended reading, saving a document file via Dropbox is much better.

hit Command + Shift + 4, to grab just a section of your webpage. I save only the walking instructions and the map. Then, enlarge it on the iPod Touch when reading it.

Airsharing tip -- the IP address is dynamically allocated on our wi-fi system and we have multiple users/computers. The ip address can change from one session to another. Always check when connecting to make sure you have the right one.

I tried to upload a map to this thread, but it was too big. It's in the notes that I wrote.

Cameron

Yes --

Dropbox is great, but be sure to save YOUR FAVORITES while connected to the network so that those are downloaded locally to your iPad, iPod Touch, iPhone for those times when not on a network.

Cameron

quote:

Originally posted by Kayd:


As for text on webpages, the screengrab gets a pretty small image,

To clarify what I meant by this: to save text that appears on any iTouch screen, do the same screenshot (no separate computer involved at all). The image is small, but enlargeable and adequate for brief reference

Marta (nice that you helped me so close to post 10,000, and nice post in the joke board), I saw you mention OffMaps in another thread, but the reviews on iTunes are certainly mixed.

I'll bring the iPod to work tomorrow, and see about some of the tips. As I said, I'm using a PC, and I don't think instructions with the Command key are of use to me.

Thanks Andrew! Here are some tips on how to save screenshots on a PC. I definitely think we can get the same results from a PC.

There are two keystrokes on a PC for capturing a screen shot to the clipboard. Open your google map in a window in your browser. Make certain the browser has the focus. Hold down the Alt key and press the Print Screen key (ALT+Printscreen). This will copy just the window with the focus to the clipboard. The other keystroke if you are curious is CTRL+ALT+Printscreen which will copy the whole screen instead of just the window with the focus. This may be close to the what the command keystrokes do on the MAC.

Now open Paint. This is on all Windows machines (Program Files > Accessories > Paint). Paste the image into Paint. If you need you can edit the image. If you have Windows XP, you have to highlight the area and cut it and then paste into a new document. If you have Windows 7, you can crop. Then go to File > Save AS and you can save the image in different types (Save as type). You can save as JPEG or PNG. I would try either format. It it ends up the best format is PDF, there are some free JPEG to PDF conversion utilities.

Also there may be another utility that you could paste it into that would do better than Paint. Photoshop Elements or maybe Office 2007 if you paste in the graphic. Oh... I just remembered - I only use XP but I think I remember Vista having a Snipping Tool that might even be better at grabbing a section of a screen. It can also save as a JPG or PNG file.

quote:

hit Command + Shift + 4, to grab just a section of your webpage

Just to clarify Cameron's tip, this key combination only works on a Mac. It will turn the cursor to a crosshair, which you use to carve out the section of the screen you want to save.

- Roz

Thank you, Marta, your method worked. The one drawback on my Google map of restaurants is that the list of restaurants matching the pointers, on the left side, doesn't fit on the screen display; it requires scrolling down, so they don't all show on the screen shot. That isn't a big deal, since I'll have it printed and on a netbook.

As for walking directions, I already know my way around Paris pretty well, and it looks like wi-fi is ubiquitous enough that I can usually enter my destination on the Google Maps app as I'm ready to start the walk.

Great! I had the same issue when I was testing the screenshots with a personalized map I had created. The list of placemarks on the left did not fit in the window. Having the list on your PC is probably the best. One item to try is to reduce the font size or zoom +- in the browser. It may also affect the size of the font in the map side or make it too small to read. I just thought I'd mention it for future reference.