Having recently swapped some marks, I noticed that the old and trusted "10 printed pages with 100's of marks" still seems to be the method of choice. As I do not need to tell you, this is:
1. A h3ll of a lot of work to re-enter
2. Prone to human error (typo's etc.)
3. Often incorrect as GPS listings do not always follow the same formats and datums.
Luckily, there are a number of free tools available to deal with this.
By far the best tool is GPSBable (http://www.gpsbabel.org/), an open source tool that converts most formats and runs on almost any platform. Unfortunately, if you are not of fairly high computer literacy, and not comfortable working from the command line or shell, this will probably cause you more headaches than help.
Luckily, some clever guys decided to build a web interface on top of GPSBabel, and this can be found at GPS Visualizer (http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/gpsbabel/). The attached picture illustrates how quick and easy it is to convert a file from the Garmin MapSource .gdb format to the Lowrance .usr format.
1. Go to http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/gpsbabel/
2. Select input file type (Garmin in this case)
3. Select output file type (Lowrance here)
4. Click on "Browse" and find the original file to convert on your PC.
5. Now simply click on "Convert the file" and you will be taken to a new page where you can download your marks in the new format.
Easy!
Caveat: Many mail filters do not recognise the plethora of GPS extensions and will block unknown file types. If this is a problem for you, try and use a free webmail account like gMail. Alternatively, convert the file to Universal .csv (which Excel will read), and your recipient can simply convert it back.
1. A h3ll of a lot of work to re-enter
2. Prone to human error (typo's etc.)
3. Often incorrect as GPS listings do not always follow the same formats and datums.
Luckily, there are a number of free tools available to deal with this.
By far the best tool is GPSBable (http://www.gpsbabel.org/), an open source tool that converts most formats and runs on almost any platform. Unfortunately, if you are not of fairly high computer literacy, and not comfortable working from the command line or shell, this will probably cause you more headaches than help.
Luckily, some clever guys decided to build a web interface on top of GPSBabel, and this can be found at GPS Visualizer (http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/gpsbabel/). The attached picture illustrates how quick and easy it is to convert a file from the Garmin MapSource .gdb format to the Lowrance .usr format.
1. Go to http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/gpsbabel/
2. Select input file type (Garmin in this case)
3. Select output file type (Lowrance here)
4. Click on "Browse" and find the original file to convert on your PC.
5. Now simply click on "Convert the file" and you will be taken to a new page where you can download your marks in the new format.
Easy!
Caveat: Many mail filters do not recognise the plethora of GPS extensions and will block unknown file types. If this is a problem for you, try and use a free webmail account like gMail. Alternatively, convert the file to Universal .csv (which Excel will read), and your recipient can simply convert it back.
