This past Holiday shopping season the price point of portable navigation devices (PND) from manufacturers like Garmin, LG, Mio, Tom Tom and many others fell under the magic 200 dollar price point and they flew off the shelves. One of the most tedious tasks on a PND is entering and searching for waypoints - the small UI isn't ideal for text entry. Fortunately most of these devices allow you to import waypoints (stops on an itinerary) that you created on your PC or Mac. With our latest release last week, Live Maps became the first major web mapping site with broad support for these PND's. You can now do your trip planning online in the convenience of your web browser and then take your itinerary on the road in your PND.

In this tutorial I'll show you how to use Live Maps to build a Collection of Waypoints and then export them to your Portable Navigation Device. Since I'm heading to the Coachella festival next week, our tutorial will build a Collection of the places that will be important to have with me on the trip - airport, hotel, concert site, and a suggested restaurant. Step 1 will show you how to add items to your Collection via address search, business search, and even interactively right-clicking on the map to indicate a stop. Then most importantly, in Step 2 we'll export the Collection to your Portable Navigation Device.

Step 1 - Create a Collection of waypoints that we want to get on our PND.

Let's look at three different ways to add items to your trip.

Location Search. Do a search for "palm springs airport". Live Maps will put an orange marker on the airport location. Hover over the marker and select 'Add To Collection'. Your first item is now added to your itinerary. In a moment we'll see how you can edit, move, and re-order the items on your collection before exporting to your PND. But first lets look at some other ways to add items to our trip.

Business Search. Do a search for "Courtyard Palm Desert, CA". Live Maps will display all of the Courtyards in the area. Hover over the one you want to add to your Collection and choose 'Add to Collection' just as we did a moment ago for the airport. This time, in the confirmation panel choose 'View this Collection' to display the Collection editor. In it you will see the 2 items we have added to our itinerary.

Create a New Pushpin. Next we want to add the Concert site. Do a search for "Coachella music festival". Live Maps doesn't have a listing for the festival, but in the result panel you can choose 'See results contributed by other people' to discover the location of the festival. Cool! Double click around the cluster of results to zoom in. Best to turn on Aerial maps at this time to get a good look at the concert grounds. You can see where the main event takes place on the polo field, and you can see the nearby parking area. Lets add the parking area to our Collection. Right-Click on the parking area and choose 'Add a Pushpin'. Fill in a Title and optional description for your new pin and hit the Save button. You have three items in your Collection now.

Optionally Edit, Move and Re-order your Itinerary. You can hover over any of the items in the Collection editor and hit 'Edit' to change their title, add a photo, etc... To refine the location on the map you can drag the pushpins around interactively. You may also want to re-order items on your itinerary. I added a rental car location to my trip, and it was appended at the end of the list by default. To move it to the second slot (after the airport) hover over it on the Collection editor and drag it up the list using the drag handle as shown below.

Step 1B - Optionally Save Your Collection

If you think you'll want to return to your list at some time in the future to make edits and additions, you can save it. If you choose to save it you can visit Live Maps any time in the future, sign in, and access any of your Collections. This is a convenient way to save and manage a library of itineraries over time.  Sales people can manage Collections of all of the ir client locations, Save a Collection for each of your family road trips, Collect a list of Restaurants you want to try... Saving is simple - Click the 'Save it now' link at the top of the Collection editor, give your Collection a friendly name, then hit Save.

Another advantage of saving is that you can then easily share your Collection with friends. Here is a link to my Collection that we have been building in this tutorial.

Step 2 - Export Your Collection

Live Maps can export your Collection to three different file formats - KML, GPX, or GeoRSS. Check the documentation that came with your PND to see which of these it supports. Once you know which File format your device supports, exporting is easy! On the Collections editor select the 'Actions -> Export' menu and  click the file format you want to export to. When prompted, give your file a name like MyCoachellaTrip.KML and hit save. You now have a file containing all of the points from your Collection saved on your PC. How you copy this file to your PND will vary between manufacturers, so be sure to again check the manual that came with your PND for details. For instance, most of the MIO's can be connected to your PC via a USB cable and you copy the file directly to it. Other devices use a special program that came with your PND to copy GPX and KML files to the PND. regardless of how you copy your Collection to the device, next time you turn it on you should be able to access all of the locations added to your Collection in Live maps and set them as destinations for Navigation. No clumsy text entry on the PND.