Since getting my shiny new GPS module and trying it out in some typical use-cases I came up with another item on my wishlist for an already extremely useful app.

Dynamic Zoom levels:

I find myself manually shifting back and forth between different zoom levels to see different details. Some of the reasons for shifting zoom are:
- see small street names
- see more detailed maps that have street names of smaller streets
- have a consistant scale of tiles and avoid ugly interfaces between different rez maps joined together
- near my destination and looking to fine tune directions

I was wondering if there was some effective ways to automate this and came up with a few dynamic zooming strategies that might be useful and reduce the amount of interaction needed between the driver and the 770:

1) Speed dependant zoom level (constant time width map)
- This mode would zoom in as your speed decreases. So as you are cruising along the highway, the map will zoom out. If you are in a residential neighbourhood where the speed limit is lower, the map will zoom in to give you navigational detail now that you are going a speed where you can deal with more info. In essence, the width of the displayed map is what would you could drive in a fixed time ... regardless of your speed. The zoom buttons will adjust the upper zoom scale bound that your speed range is divided into (i.e. change slope of speed vs. zoom level line). Some jitter control is needed to avoid maps flipping back and forth rapidly at certain threshold speeds.

2) Best Available Zoom (show best 1X scaled map tiles)
- This mode just shows you the most detailed map in your cache at the native zoom level of the map tile. It would also pick the best zoom level where all the maps displayed on screen are from the same zoom level to avoid seams between different scaled maps. People can fill their cache with detailed city maps of their destination or important turns and zoomed out maps of the freeway in between and the dynamic zoom will follow along without having to do any cache image scaling. Zoom buttons adjust lower floor of zoom levels.

3) Closest to Zoom level (constant distance with consistant zoom level tiles across screen)
- This mode is closest to the current manual zoom selection and will keep the manually selected zoom level but will pick tiles from a zoom level that can be scaled uniformly to fill the screen. If the entire screen can be filled with tiles of the appropriate zoom level then it will work just like the manual zoom does now. If the displayed areas needs tiles from different zoom levels, it will pick the tiles from the highest zoom level shown and scale them up. For example, if the users selects a zoom level of 2 and some zoom level 3 tiles will need to be used and scaled up, then only zoom level 3 tiles will be used and scaled up instead of partially using the available 2's. This mode is purely for a consistant look across the screen by getting rid of any seam between mismatching scales of map tiles. Zoom buttons adjust desired distance across screen as it does now.

Just some thoughts for consideration for addition to the todo list ... sorry for the long post.