NAC Addin for MapPoint 2006, 2009 and 2010
Price --- €29/License
NAC Addin for MapPoint is a useful complement to MapPoint desktop software that allows users to specify
locations and areas for retrieving maps, making local business search and getting turn-by-turn driving directions
with
Universal Address/Natural Area Code (NAC) in addition to other traditional street addresses, street
intersections, ZIP/postcodes, points of interests, place names and lat/lon coordinates.
Equipped with a GPS receiver and enhanced with NAC Addin, MapPoint becomes a powerful navigation system that will
be able to work on all locations no matter the locations have street addresses or not thanks to NAC Addin
that brings the capability of handling Universal Addresses/Natural Area Codes to MapPoint.
Commonly used street addresses for location based services have many problems. They are always
very long and time consuming to input. They are language dependent and difficult to type
when they contain foreign characters. They are full of variations and frequently result in failures. They
are available to very limited locations (<1% of the earth surface) and more than 99% of locations can't be
specified by street addresses.
Enhanced with the capability of the Universal Addresses, users of MapPoint can directly get the maps,
seach nearby businesses and obtain turn-by-turn driving directions of any locations in the world whenever
they want on their desktop or notebook computers thanks to the efficiency, language independency
and geographically complete coverage of the Universal Addresses. For example, you can simply input the short
Universal Address: H5Q2 R48Q to get the
map of Eiffel Tower in Paris instantly.
A Universal Address is an eight or ten character
Natural Area Code (NAC) which can represent both areas and locations anywhere in the world.
A two character NAC can specify any area about 1000 km in length and width
like a province, a four character NAC represents a 30 km long and wide area (like a city) approximately,
a six character NAC is roughly equivalent to any square kilometer area on the earth, an eight character
NAC can uniquely identify every house or building in the world, and a ten character NAC can pinpoint
any location in the world to the resolution of one meter.
With the Natural Area Codes, people can easily represent any areas and locations from countries,
provinces, national conservation parks, cities, stadiums, museums, universities, hospitals, shopping malls
to hotels, restaurants, post offices, railway stations, bus stops, docks, street lights, fire hydrants,
manholes, electric wirepoles, trees; and from locations of crimes scenes, accidents, pollutions,
underwater wreckages, news events to locations of your dating benches, BBQ tables, camping sites and
fishing spots. Now more and more businesses start including their Universal Addresses on their
websites, advertisements, business cards and yellow pages listings
such as Campgrounds.
Here are some examples of NAC enhanced products and services:
- Mobile GMaps - a powerful map applications for mobile devices
- NAC Earth - a Universal Address enhanced
Google Earth which allows users to fly to any locations in its virtual earth.
- NAC Smart Tag DLL automatically highlighting
all the Universal Addresses on Outlook emails, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations
and Access databases and linking them to their corresponding detail satellite images.
- Locamagic - a NAC enhanced GPS cellphone application
providing positioning, locating, navigating, local business searching, real-time tracking and real-time
monitoring services.
- Universal Addresses Lookup Service and Free
Geocoding Service providing Universal Addresses for any locations in the world.
- NAC Enhanced Google Maps mapping Universal
Addresses of any locations in the world on high resolution satellite images.
- NAC Enhanced Google Local displaying the
Universal Addresses of all nearby businesses of any location.
- NAC Enhanced Google Driving Directions
providing driving directions between the Universal Addresses of any locations.
Here are some sample Universal Addresses:
For looking up Universal Addresses, please check
Free Geocoding Service and NAC Enhanced
Google Maps.
Instructions of Use
Download and Installation
All computers with Windows XP or later versions and MapPoint desktop software can have NAC Addin
installed. You can download the installation package here
free of charge. The setup file can be saved in a folder on your hard drive and then double click the setup
file in the Windows Explore folder and follow the steps of instructions to install the software.
Activate NAC Addin for MapPoint
Once the software has been successfully installed, you should see "NACAddin" on the Tools menu of MapPoint. In case
you have not seen it on the menu, you can open the dialog box with the command "COM Addins" on the Tools menu to
select and activate NACAddin.
You can use "NACAddin" on Tools menu to start NACAddin dialog box on which there are four tabs called "Find location",
"Find businesses", "Driving directions" and "About NAC" as well as the display of the cursor location on the map
in Universal Address (i.e. NAC) and latitude/longitude.
Find Universal Address
You can use the mouse to move the cursor on the map and NACAddin will display the corresponding Universal Address
together with latitude/longitude coordinates. Therefore, you can obtain the Universal Address of any location
in the world including your current location from the GPS receiver with the cursor pointing at the location on the
map after a few zoomings and pannings. You can zoom the map with the zoom slider and pan the map with mouse-clicks
which will move the map center to the clicking points.
If you use the Microsoft IntelliMouse pointing device, you can also use the wheel button to zoom in or out or
to move the map.
- Roll the wheel button forward to zoom in.
- Roll the wheel button backward to zoom out.
- To move the map, hold the wheel button down and drag the mouse pointer in the direction you want.
Find Location
This tab allows you to find any locations in the world as you want. the location can be specified with
- NAC/Universal Address such as: 8CRB Q90H
- Street Address such as: 45 Huntingdale Blvd., Toronto, ON, Canada
- Intersection such as: Yonge St. & Finch Ave., Toronto, ON, Canada
- Postcode/ZIP such as: M1W 2N8, Canada
- POI such as: CN Tower, Toronto, ON, Canada
- Lat,Lon such as: 43.56486, -79.43287
If the location is given with a Universal Address or NAC or lat/lon coordinates, the location can always be
found and unique. If the location is given with a street address or street intersection, the location will
be found only in the coverage of the installed MapPoint (North America Version for North America and Europe
Version for European countries). All other representations are available in some areas. All the found locations
will be shown on the map with labels of their corresponding Universal Addresses. If there are multiple
locations found, they will be put in the Found Location box on which you can click an item to see its detail
information and center the map at that location.
Find Businesses
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This tab allows you to find businesses in all categories in the neighborhood of any location given with
Universal Address/NAC, street address, street intersection, ZIP/postcode, POI and lat/lon coordinates. All the
found items will be shown on the map and listed on the Found Businesses box on which you can click an item to
get its detail information and center the map at its location. All the found items are shown with their
corresponding Universal Addresses.
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Driving Directions
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This tab allows you to get turn-by-turn driving directions and route map from any location through any way points
to any destination. All the locations can be given with Universal Address/NAC, street address, street intersection,
ZIP/postcode, POI and lat/lon coordinates. All the locations the route must go through should be given in the
Through Locations separated with semi-colons. If the route is found, the turn-by-turn instructions will be listed
in the Directions box above which the total distance and total driving time will be displayed. A click on an item
on the Directions box will show its detail information and the best view map for the route segment.
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About NAC
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This tab gives you a brief explanation of NAC and Universal Address and the URL to its official website.
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