NaviGadget

In a world first on the technology front, Tourism Radio has been launched in Cape Town, a GPS-driven radio station that provides tourists with literally on-the-spot info about where they are and what to see nearby. (just in case: SA stands for South Africa)

How does Tourism Radio work? First, you rent a car with the special GPS device that allows the radio to “tune in” to the various satellites spinning overhead. Fortunately, this is easy: Budget, National, Alamo, Scenic and Sixt all provide GPS-equipped cars (and at a cost of only R10-R15 more per day than a car without GPS).

Next, set the radio dial to 90.2 FM - and then simply start driving! One of the beauties of this system is that you can switch between GPS-provided content and normal radio (see: Radio Stations in South Africa) without any hassle; just twist the dial. But for Cape Town first-timers, why would you want to switch away from Tourism Radio? Just listen to what’s on air:

Intellipoints: As you drive around Cape Town, a satellite determines your position, and then sends location-specific content to your ears. During a test drive around the Atlantic Seaboard, the radio transitioned smoothly from a short insert on Granger Bay (a small inlet between Moullie Point and the harbor) to a quick run-down of the V&A Waterfront, and what to see and do inside. There are no less than seventeen intellipoints around the peninsula, covering all the must-sees.

Drop ins: Like intellipoints, but shorter. Tourism Radio knows the direction that you’re driving in - how neat is that - and accordingly “drops in” the odd bit of info, such as “on your left, Cape Town’s top seafood restaurant…” and so on.

Tourist-oriented radio shows: There’s more than fifty hours of programming at any given moment on Tourism Radio. You’ll hear nifty inserts like “Top 20 Questions Visitors Want to Ask South Africans”, as well as plenty of local music, complete with advice on where to find it.

Etronics presents WIDETOUCH 5.6″ T-DMB navigation ‘W-5.6DMB’. It features a map by MANDO MAP & SOFT, GPS SiRF III module, and Samsung S3C2440 (ARM9) 400MHz CPU for quick response time. Particularly, the W-5.6DMB features high quality sound with Etronics AV technology accumulated for a long time. It has a combined car kit type FM transmitter and it can play mp3 or video files with USB port. It will be released in June and 6 colors will be available: black, white, pink, red, blue, and green.

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After the advertisement of IT’S Origami, IT’ S Label announces the launching of a single product on the market, a portable, fore-mentioned GPS/DVD the GD58 with a personalized version of the software of Destinator navigation.

Some is the chosen use, GPS or reader DVD, the GD58 will assure you a visual comfort thanks to his screen 6 inches and a high quality of image. Its dress metallized gray confers a look resolutely to him tendency without neglecting the technical aspects: 2 Gigas of read-write memory, reading of charts SD, reading of all the standards files, DIVX, mP3, JPEG… Function GPS integrates technology SIRF III.

The GD58 is as of now available in the distribution network of ITS Label (Fnac, Conforama, Surcouf, cdiscount.com….) to the suggested public price of 799 Euros.

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The Taiwanese company Novogo revealed some information on the next PND to come from the mark which will be in a few days officially presented at the time of the living room Computex 2006 of Taipei.

Thus in the category of the new PND of Novogo, the company announces to update its range of PND already available on the market with in particular the series T of Novogo, PND allowing to use in option or standard an adapter TMC (information traffic via RDS-FM), which will have from now on a chip GPS SiRFStar III.

Novogo also announces the arrival of a new range of PND of the series S, with a form Factor rounded, a luminous screen and finally a Bluetooth connector industry which will make it possible to use the apparatus of pocket like a simple kit free hands.

Lastly, the Taiwanese company Novogo also announced the arrival of a new PND which has the characteristic to integrate a Tuner TV (DMB-T) in more than one screen of a size of 4 inches, making it possible to sail by GPS or to view tele programs into direct and broadcast with through all Europe.

This PND of series X of Novogo will be revealed officially in the next days at the time of the living room Computex 2006 of Taipei.

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…Devices from companies like Olathe-based Garmin International use satellite tracking to help runners, walkers and bikers calculate their speed and the grade of that hill they just climbed, and even show their course on a computer using satellite maps from Google Earth.

Heart-rate monitors help them calculate the calories they’re burning and see whether they’re working hard enough, or too hard

Based on sales at online retailers such as Amazon.com, Garmin has grabbed a dominant spot in the fitness world in only a few years. While companies like Timex and Polar may be better known, Garmin’s popular Forerunner fitness trainers have caught the imagination of both serious runners and moms pushing baby strollers.

“It’s amazing the lengths we will go to improve our performance,” said John Wickstrom, a Prairie Village cyclist who uses a Polar heart rate monitor. “If we all lost 30 or 40 pounds, we could just fly.”

All the gadgets generally are designed to accomplish the same task — make us smarter about how we work out.

The best of the gear warns us when we’re working too hard, provides motivation and makes exercise a little more fun.

“After all, it’s supposed to be fun,” said Sean Staggs, project manager for the Mid America Chapter of National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

Staggs uses his Garmin gear for both running and cycling. But he also uses it to plot routes for MS fundraising walks and the MS150 bike ride.

For the upcoming 50-mile MS Challenge Walk, for instance, Staggs will use Garmin technology to map hills and other challenges, giving walkers a heads up to rest up before the big ones.

Of course, there are some other, less tangible, issues.

“There’s always a little bit of competition involved,” Wickstrom said. “Somebody gets a new device, and then someone else wants to get something better.”…

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As a continuation from yesterdays post about RAM Mounts; this dude in France installed Treo TomTom navigation system on his Vespa GranTurismo 125. This installation doesn’t look as professional as the other Vespa installation we talked about this year, but it seems more functional and sturdy.

Now that the mount is all put together and on the Vespa, let’s have a look at how the Aqua Box works. After the Treo has been put in its comfortable foam bed, the lid is closed and solidly kept in place by a large clip that is running almost completely from the top to the bottom of the right side of the box. The plastic shield in the lid is only a millimeter away from the front of the Treo, ensuring your precious device won’t go anywhere when you hit an unexpected bump in the road. Although the plastic is fairly thick to protect the Treo from the dangerous world outside, it’s sufficiently flexible to push hard buttons and the 5-way nav buttons, to type simple things on the keyboard, and to press larger areas on the touchscreen. I wouldn’t recommend trying to type emails or playing games. But you wouldn’t want to do that anyway while riding a scooter, would you? Oh, not on the pictures below but still important: I usually put my GlobalSat BT-338 GPS receiver in a pocket of my coat or in the leather belt pouch that came with it.

check out more pics here

Yep, it is possible. A company called RAM Mounts let’s you mount almost anything to almost anything. They have a big section on their website just for GPS products, covering all the big names such as Garmin, Magellan, Lowrance, TomTom, etc… You can get a suction cup mount for your windshield, or just a flat surface mount, handlebar mount for your bicycle, or a clutch mount for your motorcycle… a huge selection. Pictured above is what they call a triple base adapter.

The RAP-333 allows up to three items to be mounted side by side off a single RAM mount. It’s almost like creating a dash board allowing easy access and viewing of your portable devices. Best used with a durable aluminum RAM kit, installation and adjustments are easy. This is a great option when space is limited or proximity is necessary so devices can be linked.

Via has beaten Samsung to market with its Origami ultra mobile PC, with the Pace Blade Easy Book E7 now available in the UK.

But despite expectations that it would be much cheaper than Samsung’s Q1, its price will be just £49 less.

The low-drain C7-M processor should have allowed the Pace Blade UMPC to be sold for a much lower price than Intel-based models like the Q1.

Speaking in the UK, Colin Brix, Via’s chipset platform group international marketing specialist, commented: ‘We sell the chips cheaper [than Intel]. Whether [manufacturers] want to save that cost and pass it on to customers - that’s their choice.’

At Winhec in the US, Charles Holthaus, who worked for chip designer Centaur when it was taken over by Via, disputed Intel’s figures for the performance per watt of its mobile processors.

The Via Origami shown at Winhec, branded Tablet Kiosk Eo in the US, sells for $850 (£490), including a satellite-navigation module, a price that could put it in competition with high-end PDAs as well as traditional notebooks.

But in the UK the same model - under the Pace brand - costs £750, and does not come with the GPS module. The Samsung Q1 will sell in the UK for £799 when it comes out on 1 June.

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There are some gizmos I have been poised to buy for years but have procrastinated until improved price and reliability make further resistance impossible. A GPS (global positioning system) satellite navigator, preferably linked to my mobile phone, is one of them. Over the years, the paraphernalia needed has shrunk from a small jungle of wires and hardware to models that simply need a mobile phone (or personal digital assistant) and a matchbox-sized receiving device that resides on the dashboard, or in your pocket if walking. The device links to the phone by a short-distance wireless connection (Bluetooth) so there are no wires unless it is being recharged through the car’s cigarette socket.

This is more than a navigational aid, because a new industry is springing up that sells services and games based on knowing exactly where you are. The trouble is that virtually every model I have trialled has had faults, and often had to be exchanged for one that worked better.

The latest one, CoPilot, from ALK Technologies, was no exception. Its main selling point is a fascinating new feature enabling (approved) people to follow your route on a map on a website. This has obvious commercial, as well as personal, uses: firms could see exactly where their vehicles are and the likes of Tesco could let customers track their web-ordered goods.

Potentially, you could keep a history of where you have been on holidays or your daily journeys, as long as you can afford the data charges. Someone is bound to find a way of linking the geographic data to Flickr’s photo website or Google Earth’s wonderful zoom-in reproduction of the planet. If used with the new Olympus digital recorders (with up to 150 hours of storage) you could soon get a record of your life.

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auto-tranlated from French: After the first PND Bluemedia which had been launched now a year ago and half by Navigon and causing a significant fall in the prices of the PND, Navigon returns on the market of the PND with Transonic PNA 6000 and 6000T.

The PND is not unknown, since it is the same hardware as Medion PNA 500 and PNA 510, on the other hand the PNA 6000 and 6000T uses Navigon MobileNavigator 5.

Their principal characteristics:

* Receiver GPS integrated with chip GPS SiRF III
* Receiver RDS/TMC integrated for information traffic (only on the PNA 6000T)
* Processor Samsung 2440 To 300 MHz
* Touch screen 3,5 inches TFT 65 536 colors of resolution 240×320 pixels
* Port SD/MMC (up to 1 Go)
* Battery Lithium-ion of 1 200 mAh (5 hour endurance of use GPS)
* Dimensions : 10,8 X 7 X 2 cm
* Weight : 200 G
* Microsoft Windows CE.net 4.2
* Software of navigation Navigon MobileNavigator 5 with Navteq cartography, addition of the radars with utility POI Warner
* Reader MP3 (but not of listening of MP3 at the same time as navigation GPS)
* Provided with a support conveys, a charger lights cigar and a cable of synchronization

It’s a pity that information provided traffic RDS/TMC covers only the paying motorways and is not of Premium type to propose information traffic in the large cities like Paris Intra muros and its peripheral in particular.

The PNA 6000 is delivered with the cartography of France on chart SD and the PNA 6000T has in more one receiver RDS/TMC integrated as well as CD of the countries of Europe.

They are respectively sold 299 Euro and 349 Euro € and will be available semi June in the great distribution.