StreetDeck? Anybody know anything about it?

I happened across an ad for StreetDeck software. Anybody know anything about this?

I own it. It's a nice piece of software, and the price is great ($99 for NA navigation).

It uses NavTeq maps which were pretty much dead on the money.

StreetDeck 2.0 has only been out for about a month. The navigation engine is essentially brand-new, and completely different from StreetDeck 1.0 (which used Microsoft Mappoint for navigation).

The software looks pretty decent. It is currently developed and maintained by one lone programmer. The pricing is finally competitive, since you don't have to buy a copy of Mappoint for $250. But at $99 each, he's probably not yet putting food on the table.

You can see a video of StreetDeck 2.0 in operation at Youtube: [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRaNriKQZLs[/ame] Notice the many touchscreen-optimized features of StreetDeck. There are several touchscreen netbooks coming out later this year, so this might finally be the year when touchscreen breaks into the mass market.

This second video illustrates how touch screen friendly StreetDeck is even on a small screen of the above UMPC.

The navigation engine in StreetDeck 2.0 appears to be based on deCarta NavSDK. The data in StreetDeck comes in the form of .RMF files. RMF FAQ:

Relevant information from the NavSDK FAQ:

StreetDeck says that it's DirectX-accelerated, and deCarts says that it only supports Windows GDI. Conclusion: StreetDeck uses a custom map rendering engine, but most of its other navigation features (and quirks) should be shared with other programs/devices based on deCarta.

deCarta trumpets its association with "Industry leaders such as Google, Yahoo!, Ask.com, Zillow, Multimap.com and Hotels.com" (http://www.decarta.com/about/company_history.htm) Surprising that I've never heard of them before (and the name "deCarta" has not appeared once on LaptopGPSWorld, yet).

StreetDeck is also much more than just navigation. I used it when I was driving truck OTR. I used it to play my mp3's, had my XM radio running through it, etc. It's well worth looking at.

Also, you can import your own POI's into custom categories, which is a great feature. You can have multiple stops in your trip. When combined with a touchscreen, it's, to put it mildly, a great program. And for $99, you really can't go wrong with it.

I tried the trial of StreetDeck on my ASUS R2h UMPC. The navigation program looked ok but I wasn't interested in any of the other features. After experiencing hangups twice in the nav program where only my right mouse button was active and I had to restart the UMPC to get out of it, I quit testing. I'm sure it would be more interesting for those using satellite radio or some of the other features.

Terry

One of the problems with single-developer projects is that they are not well-tested on a variety of hardware platforms.

I suspect you will run into the fewest glitches with Streetdeck if you use it with a Viliv S5, which seems to be the developer's preferred device of late. Undoubtedly, any prominent bugs on the developer's own preferred device will get top priority.

There seems to be some sort of formal or informal linkage between Viliv and StreetDeck. SD may be optimized for the S5 and the Viliv importers recommend SD as something they know works with the S5.

It certainly is more finger-friendly on the small S5 screen than is, say, Microsoft's Streets and Trips and it's graphics are big and bold just as you need on top of your dashboard.

However, it doesn't look as easy to use to set up a complex multi-stop route as S&T. See, I want to plan my trips on my home PC on the 24" screen and then download the file to the S5 and off-we-go. I don't think I can do that with SD which seems suited only to OTR/UMPC use.

I am willing to listen, however, to suggestions.

You can put as many stops into the route as you want with streetdeck. They're easy to do, as well as reorganize.

Easy for you maybe but difficult for me. I cannot even get it to recognize my street address. I find it fiddly. I am not worried about the number of stops, just the ease.

Streets & Trips 2009 can't find my street address, but my Garmin nuvi & Streetdeck can.

There's not a single mapping program that I've heard of that can find every single address.

Get a copy of S&T Keys. It's over in the Streets & Trips forum in the Add-ons subsection. Some people are using it to run Streets&Trips on their S5s and finding it works well.

Isn't Streetdeck a generic frontend that you can use to run anything? If so, you could also use it to run Streets&Trips rather than the built-in nav software, I think.

...ken...

I've got Keys and it is a help for navigating around the map and the popup menu. But certain things are finger-unfriendly. For instance, dealing with individual lines on an itinerary. Also, the small screen of the S5 sometimes requires donning the reading glasses to see some of the finer items on S&T. Still, I remain loyal to S&T. At least I can use my finger to pan the map around in the window.

No, it doesn't seem to be just a front end that could pull up S&T.

At any rate, it is nice to have a variety of navigation apps and an increasingly broad range of device form factors so that we can all find what suits us individually best.