You might have a netbook and Google Earth, but if you move around a lot, you would have realised pretty fast that having an internet connection all the time is very difficult to achieve.
And there are time you need a map or satellite imagery, but you don’t have an internet connection.
What GMapCatcher does
GMapCatcher is a simple python application for Linux, OSX and Windows that provides an interface for searching and viewing maps and satellite imagery from OpenStreetMap, Google, Yahoo, Cloudmade, Information Freeway and OpenCycleMap.
Also, apart from just viewing the maps, it gives you a powerful and simple interface for downloading the maps and viewing them offline. So next time you go trekking, you can load the satellite imagery of the area you plan to trek to before heading out 
Download and install
Go to the GMapCatcher project page on Google Code and download the file that matches your operating system.
Linux
The download is a .tar.gz file. Extract the contents and run the maps.py program.
You’ll need the python for this. If you don’t have it already, install the python package via your package manager (or on Ubuntu, just type sudo apt-get install python in a terminal).
OSX
Should be the same as Linux. I don’t have a Mac, so not tried it out 
Windows
There is a straightforward installer for Windows. This installer contains python and GTK for Windows.
Usage
GMapCatcher has an exceedingly simple interface, there’s not much to explain about it.
This is what it looks like:
There is a settings option, which allows you to set a number of options, including the default directory to which the downloaded map tiles are to be saved and options to set the map provider.
While downloading a map, you can specify the area to be downloaded, the latitude, longitude, and the zoom levels. You also get a progress bar, so you know how much of it is done:
The latest version has GPS support, and supports all GPS devices that work with GPSD.
If you’re a Windows user and want GPS support, you’ll have to install GPSD for Windows.
Check out the screenshots section of the wiki for screenshots.
Has anyone tried this on their out-of-civilisation expeditions? Let us know in the comments!
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Hi, My name is Narayanan and i'm your resident blogger. Technology and internet have always fascinated me and that's the reason behind the origin of this blog. Thanks for visiting Tech Spikes :)