Throughout our holiday GiveGive campaign, we asked Club TomTom readers, “Wouldn’t it be cool if TomTom could…” You know, if all the researchers, developers, engineers, and technology in the world were at your disposal, how would you harness the power of GPS to improve your personal navigation device?

We got a wide range of entries, some feasible, some not so much. Some for features that TomTom already sports (What? You haven’t checked out TomTom Buddies yet?). The judges came up with a winner. Brian Padalino of New York was one of the many to latch on to the idea of expanding the use of POI categories.

We could explain it for you, but Brian spells it out quite nicely.

So being a pretty young and on-the-go type of guy, I find that trying to keep track of what’s going on in different places can be a little cumbersome.

If I were the creative force behind this application, I would have different events POI updated on a daily basis for different cities throughout the USA. This would be the basis for additions to an ad-hoc itinerary for the night - which includes all travel times, event times, etc. This might even be able to subscribe to an RSS feed of someone’s online calendar. It would then update the calendar based on selected POI’s. This update could happen either when the device was connected to either the PLUS service via GPRS or just to a computer over USB.

So, in summary, a city-by-city events POI that gets updated daily for the next week or so which can be browsed and added to an itinerary which will give travel times and time that can be spent at each event - and might even try to figure out the best way to travel to each of the events to maximize time and make sure you aren’t late getting to the next one!!

It doesn’t sound too complicated, but it really does exploit the power of a personal navigation device. By synchronizing various calendars with one downloadable POI set, one-off events are right there in your car with you, not to mention how to get there and when they start.

For his efforts, Brian is the recipient of a TomTom goody bag for his TomTom ONE. Thanks to all who entered and stay tuned for more creative contests at Club TomTom!

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