Going on a trip and you’re getting ready to print? Stop, don’t kill that tree! Here’s a cool money (and tree) saving trick for caching Google Map driving directions on your iPod touch.

This should be pretty straight forward:

1. Enter your Departure and Destination locations, and tap directions.

2. Tap the dog ear icon at the bottom left of the screen (see image at right), then tap Map (allow a few moments for that to load) and then tap the dog ear + Satellite (load) and dog ear + Hybrid (load)

Now, according to Chris Breen of ComputerWorld, you should be good to go. However, in testing four or five different routes, I noticed that some views only partially loaded and sometimes not at all, which left me looking at a plain gray grid and a purple line with no streets or landmarks — nothing.

Thereupon, and this will take a few minutes longer, but to insure that you’ve got a complete map once you’re out on the road away from Wi-Fi: tap Start and walk through each step of the driving directions allowing the view to fully load and, if you so desire, change the view, zooming in to better view certain critical turns or sets of turns.

Now, once you’re out on the road, fire up your iPod touch, tap Google Maps and then just press Start.

Yes, you can go back

But only if you premap the return trip. The trick here is to save the turns + directions as screen captures, which is very, very easy to do — a trick I wouldn’t have thought of if Mr. Breen hadn’t mentioned it.

Simply swap the departure and destination addresses, tap directions and then for each direction / turn, press your iPod touch’s Power and Home buttons. The screen will flash and, unless you’ve turned sounds off, you should hear a camera click, which means you’ve successfully captured that view and that will be stored in order in your iPod touch’s Photo app.

Then, you can view these directions as a manual slide show — think of these images as digital breadcrumbs.

Do you have a better way to map and save directions on the iPod touch? Always looking for a better way to build a mousetrap…

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Entry was posted on Thursday, October 22nd, 2009 at 1:40 pm under Free Apps, How-to, Internet, iPod Touch.  Print This Post

Read more entries by Ronald O Carlson.
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