NaviGadget

TomTom and Vodafone UK today announced that they will soon develop a new traffic information system that will be superior to the not so reliable TMC. The details have not been announced just yet but first thing that comes to mind is what Dash has been testing here in the U.S - a network that utilizes other drivers on the road to gather what we call “real real time traffic information”.

This exclusive agreement will see TomTom’s in-house patented technology use information from the Vodafone UK network to provide accurate, real-time information on the speed and direction of cars travelling on all major roads across the UK. As a result customers will have a better understanding of the exact traffic situation and be able to plan and change their route instantly to avoid traffic congestion.

TomTom says they’re ready to go live with this in Netherlands later this year and make it available in the U.K. first half of 2008. Here in the US Dash has been public with their Dash network for a while and just recently they chose their 2000 drivers around the country to test their Dash Express. We can’t wait!!! Note: Navigadget was unfortunately not in that 2000.

It was on frontpage of Digg dubbed as the anti-iPhone. Just yesterday OpenMoko announced the availability of the first open source hardware phone called Neo 1973. We had talked about this GPS enabled Linux phone a while ago but then forgot about until last night when we read this announcement to the open source community.

In our factory in China, 400 Neos are waiting for you all. Another 600
will be ready before next week. More are queued up waiting for us to say go…
…Starting July 9th, we will launch openmoko.com and start taking orders.

They’re first going to make two models available for developers and starting in October this year will start shipping the ‘mass market Neo 1973′. They’ll ask $450 for Neo Base and $600 for Neo Advanced.

So why is this OpenMoko Neo 1973 is on Navigadget when every other site completely occupied by iPhone? Well, because unlike the iPhone, Neo 1973 has an integrated AGPS chip which you can read about in great detail here.

iNavi G1 is one of those in-car entertainment systems that never make it out of Korea and leave Westerners drooling. First off it is a GPS navigation device that can render 3D maps including 3D buildings, and even the night sky with stars and mountains in the background. The navigation system is supplemented with a geomagnetic sensor (g-sensor) to help navigate where GPS signals are weak or nonexistent such as between tall buildings and tunnels. Just like many others iNavi G1 also has a DMB receiver that lets your watch you favorite channel while navigating (who’s doing the driving?) thanks to its Picture-In-Picture capability.

iNavi G1 is also a media player supporting various formats such as MP3, AC3, AVI, ASF, WMV, MPG, MPEG, WMA, and OGG. However since there’s no on-board HDD you may wonder how to put your videos or music on to the device. Well, no worries. The iNavi has an SD memory slot as well as a USB host meaning you’ll have as much storage as your flash disks can hold.

Other features include a photo album to easily view your pics, several games, and a smart little software called ‘car diary’ to keep track of various car related expenses and other things.

And here is the best feature we left for last: The iNavi G1 is also a karaoke machine which we believe makes it the first and only device to combine GPS navigation with karaoke. Congratulations iNavi G1! via

This GPS navigation device with DMB has a 7 inch TFT LCD screen which is complemented by a circular 1.15 inch mini PMOLED display as an extra step towards easier user interaction. It will come in handy when confirming operations or showing the next turn you need to take when navigating. The GPS system on board is also equipped with a 1.3MP digital camera which will capture an image of what’s in front covering everything from 5 to 95 degrees and it will also store the image. The software is also smart enough to take pictures only when it senses motion.

Other features include multimedia capabilities, supporting USB port as well as a USB host… via

Identec Solutions of Austria just announced satellite assisted RFID technology that can track a certain asset’s location independent from a base station. However the technology is not in real time for you’ll still have to wait for your container to arrive at the port.

The new tags which have a read / write range of 500 meters are equipped with self-tracking GPS tag utilizes satellites in combination with RFID to chart its route and movement. Once within range of an Identec Solutions reader, the GPS Tag will provide crucial information on the assets movements.

This new technology is developed for asset or personnel tracking applications, and in particular for container and port transits - nothing of interest to everyday consumers.

Medion made available bunch of new models in Europe, namely the GoPal E3115, E3215, E3315 and E3415. They all have a screen that measures 3.5 inches and come with various alternatives (hands free Bluetooth kit, Premium Traffic Information) and will use the new version of the GoPal navigation; Version 3.

This new range has interesting prices in particular 149€ for the E3115 which is quite inexpensive and the top-of-the-range model that is still less than 249€

Their main features :

• 3.5 inch TFT touch screen
• Integrated Centrality GPS Receiver
• Centrality Atlas III Processorat 400 MHz
• RDS/TMC integrated traffic information receiver for E3215 and E3415
• hands free Bluetooth Kit for E3315 and E3415
• 512 MB of integrated memory
• SD Port (up to 2 GB)
• 6 hour endurance
• Dimensions : 9.2 x 8 x1.8 cm
• Weight : 148 G
• Preloaded fixed radar locations
• Tourist guide Berlitz with 50 European cities (E3215, E3315 and E3415 only)
• MP3 player
• Image viewer
• Windows CE 5.0

E3115 comes with regional maps on its integrated memory and it is sold for 149€.
E3215 (with receiver RDS/TMC) is provided with maps of Western Europe on a 1GB SD card and it is sold for €199.
E3315 (with hands free Bluetooth kit) is provided with maps of all of Europe on a 1GB SD memory card for 199€
E3415 (RDS/TMC receiver and hands free Bluetooth kit) comes with maps of all of Europe on a 2GB SD memory card for 249€… via

Trekker is a GPS system for the blind and visually impaired that uses GPS and digital maps to help blind persons find their way in urban and rural areas.

Trekker which retrofits a Dell PDA as you can tell from the image above is designed to complement existing aids such as white canes and guide dogs but it does not replace them. It provides information in the most natural way possible and allows users to record both vocal and written notes.

Trekker hardware does not contain a GPS receiver but you can use any off the shelf hardware for GPS input and it can be upgradaded, so it can expand to accommodate new hardware platforms and more detailed geographic information which brings us to Maestro Option which allows the use of an agenda, text documents, vocal notes, contact directory, Daisy reader (Victor Reader Pocket), and soon, media player, email manager, calculator, choice of a second language.

Here are main features of Trekker

• Real-time information detection (Intersections and Point of Interest)
• Real-time/offline map browsing (Route Preview)
• Route planning and recording (Guiding Rules)
• Flexible level of vocal informationVocal Point of Interest creation
• Access to GPS status information
• Weight: 600 g (1.3 lbs)
• Size 87mm (3.4″) x 134mm (5.26″) x 27mm (1″)

product pdf

If you are lost in the wilderness a simple handheld GPS receiver may help you a lot. But if you are hurt or out of supplies or in some other serious trouble a mere GPS receiver won’t help. That’s because a GPS device will only tell you where you are - but will not notify authorities that may be looking for you. That’s why you need something called a personal locator beacon (PLB).

Meet MicrOFix from ACR. Popular among hunters, pilots, hikers, climbers and other outdoors men these devices when activated transmits on 406 MHz via the COSPAS-SARSAT satellite system with the sender’s unique registered, digitally coded distress signal. Emergency officials monitoring the system not only will be able to tell who is sending the signal (thanks to the coding and registration data) but precisely where the signal is coming from as a result of the built-in GPS engine. The beacon’s highly-sensitive, built-in -136 dBm GPS receiver provides for faster acquisition, a bonus in any rescue where every second counts.

The MicrOFix is a new model from ACR which claims to be smallest PLB ever built - 35% smaller and 25% lighter than its predecessor, the ACR TerraFix. MicrOFix is available throughout the U.S. for a suggested retail price of $740. You can also read a comprehensive review on MicrOFix.

In one hand we have people saying how stand-alone GPS navigation devices will soon be obsolete, since eventually all phones will have an embedded GPS chip, and in the other hand we have the state of the art Nokia N95 and Blackberry 8800 which do come with a GPS chip but can not deliver reliable GPS features.

Check out these people complaining about the fix time of their Nokia N95:

Robert Scoble says GPS on N95 sucks:

The GPS? Frustrating to use. You’ve gotta be outside and even then it takes several minutes to get a “fix”.

Since that’s one feature the iPhone doesn’t have, that tells me that Steve Jobs was probably smart in leaving GPS off of the iPhone.

A review on CNet also mentions not being able to connect to satellites:

However, we weren’t able to lock onto a GPS satellite for some reason during our test period — perhaps the areas we tested in didn’t have a clear enough view of the sky.

And lets look at Blackberry 8800 which is not as bad since it gets helps from cellular towers to get a fix.

This review mentions lack of available maps that don’t rely on cellular networks:

Make no mistake, though, you don’t need to see a cellular tower in order to get a GPS lock. Though in this case, it may not matter as much–without access to a cell tower for data service, there will be no maps from TeleNav, Google, or anything else but what’s already on the device, and to my knowledge there aren’t any cellular-independent mapping packages for the BlackBerry.

However you can still find very unhappy customers of GPS enabled Blackberry 8800:

So how does the GPS perform? Well, like the performance of the device itself, rather slowly. The built in software (Telenav) for GPS (which costs a monthly fee of $9 extra) has a nasty habit of taking a significant amount of time to get a fix before letting you even make use of the navigation features. I was very disappointed in the software’s inability to quickly get up and running. Having to wait up to 5 minutes just for the phone to get a GPS fix really limited the usefulness of the software for quick navigation tasks such as finding a local gas station or fast food restaurant.

(Note: Engineers at Nokia must have realized how bad the GPS performs so just recently the word came out that they’d be releasing a new firmware update for N95 to enable use of A-GPS)

So we believe there’s enough evidence to claim that GPS enabled phones are not up to the task of replacing standalone GPS navigation devices just yet. Their satellite fix times are slow, the maps need to be downloaded which can require a costly data plan.

There’s no need to throw away your Garmin, Mio, or Magellan just yet. If you are looking for a GPS integrated phone that delivers reliable GPS feature you may have to wait a bit longer. We can’t wait to hear about how the GPS functions on the new Mio A702 by the way - it uses SiRFDirect which may improve its performance.

Falcom is a German company that specialize in wireless communication solutions. One of their consumer products is the new Mambo II, an advanced personal tracker. Mambo II is a quad-band GSM/GPRS phone that integrates a 20 channel low-power GPS receiver to meet your tracking needs.

It has a helix GPS antenna for to provide a better reception for the SiRF Star III chip and a powerful 1300mAh Li-Ion battery that lasts a looong time thanks to the 3D motion detector. It even has bluetooth so you can pair it up with your PDA or laptop to get navigation, or just in your vehicle to use your car’s speakers. Mambo II also complies with ZigBee for indoor tracking and communication with keyfobs. Another convenient feature is the fact that it recharges and transmits through mini-USB!

When Mambo II receives signals from at least 4 satellites it can determine its location, speed, and direction, and transmit this data to your current ISP - enabling you to follow your Mambo II from any PC using the Trace4You website in real time. The position of the device can also be received via SMS or e-mail upon request, and a geofence can be setup using the web interface.

We have no info on pricing or availability just yet.