MapForums

Last week I showed you how you can use Live Maps as a friendly means of building itineraries for use on your Personal Navigation Device (PND) from Garmin, TomTom, etc...

Kip from the LiveSide blog followed up a couple of days later with this 3 minute companion video showing you how to do the export from Live Maps to a GPX or KML file for use on your PND (or any other application or website that can read one of these formats)

These posts lead a number of people to ask me "Is it possible to do the opposite - I want to get a trail from my GPS or Navigation system into Live Maps". No problem - we have had import capability in Live Maps for GeoRSS, KML and GPX files since last year. As an example, here is a 36 mile trail captured on a Garmin Edge Cycling GPS.

Assuming your device can save a KML or GPX file, the import process is easy.

1. Go to Live Maps and sign in with your Live ID.
2. Select the 'Collections -> Open Your Collections' menu
3. Click the 'Import' Button
4. Select your KML or GPX file to import. Give your new Collection a name or choose to have this trail appended to one of your existing Collections.
5. Press Import and wait a moment while your trail is loaded.

Once loaded you can email it to a friend with the 'Share' link in the upper right. It will also be discoverable by other users who search and explore at Live Maps. THis is an easy way to build and share catalogues of your trips, runs, hikes, etc...