NaviGadget

Barry Schnitt, Google’s spokesperson responded to a discussion on Bits blog ran by The New York Times when the author used the word “secretly” to describe how Google figured the locations of cell towers:

Google figures out which cell towers are where by secretly enlisting the help of a million of its mobile maps users who happen to have phones with built-in GPS devices that are not locked by the carriers (that means no one who uses Verizon). These phones have been reporting to Google where they are, based on the GPS data and what cell tower they are connected to.

Barry Schnitt then tried to explain that this was in Google Mobile Privacy Policy so it would be better to reword it:

Thus, I think “secretly” is an overstatement. If you want to say “without proactively notifying users” to make a similar point, that would be much more accurate.

He also said Google does not have a way of connecting a mobile device’s unique ID to its user:

We don’t actually know who the person is or reliably where the phone is. We know that specific queries where the map is centered have come from a unique id number… …From our logs, we are not able to distinguish these three very common use cases. Also, users have the ability to re-set the unique client id number as often as they would like. Finally, we do not know who “you” are and don’t have any way of finding out. There is no name, phone number, address, email or account login associated with this information.

Check out the blog post for the whole article and other people’s comments.

Thanks Dave.

We haven’t talked about GPS navigation systems from Korea for a while now. It is quite common there where everyday some new company launches a new sat nav system souped up with DMB receiver and picture in picture capability.

Today we have VENTURI which launched such a system with 7-inch screen called CREW vn740. The screen is from Samsung and the GPS receiver is SiRF Star III. It has a 400Mhz processor, comes with an FM transmitter and can also play audio, video, and show photos… via

Zipcar is a revolutionary car rental service operating in select big cities in the US, Canada, and the UK. The process is fairly simple, join the club, get your Zipcard, reserve for a few hours or the whole day, hold your card to the door - watch them unlock, and then drive away.

As if all this high tech system isn’t enough, Zipcar just introduced a mobile tracking system to find the car nearest to you. All you have to do is use your GPS enabled phone to locate a car near you, make an instant reservation, drive all you want and return it to a designated parking space.

The rates vary somewhere between $7 to $11 per hour or $65 to $100 per day. Gas and insurance included. Yay… via

RouteConverter is a software for converting various GPS log files or way points into other formats that may be useful to you. To see full list of supported formats just go to the features page.

It has a long list of features some which are

• no installation necessary
• automatically detects the format of a file
• supports drag and drop
• offers a map view onto the positions of routes, tracks and waypoints
• supports multiple routes within Google Earth, GPX and Garmin MapSource files
• and a lot more…

RouteConverter is licensed under the GNU General Public License meaning you don’t need to pay a dime for it. Just download it and enjoy it.

Swiss GPS chip maker u-blox recently announced two new GPS modules. Called LEA-5, the new series is based on u-blox’ fifth generation positioning engine, u-blox 5, which boasts an acquisition performance of less than one second.

u-blox 5 offers an ultra-fast acquisition time thanks to its 50-channel GPS architecture with over 1 million correlators and separate acquisition and tracking engines, capable of massively parallel searches. Combined with u-blox’ AssistNow A-GPS service, the u-blox 5 chip and module generation acquires satellites in less than one second.

LEA-5 modules are also ultra fast and has -160 dBm acquisition and tracking sensitivity.

Google Maps for Mobile’s new feature called ‘my location’ just got announced today. It is a new feature that puts a blue dot on Google Maps showing where you are. The best part is that it does not require your mobile device to have GPS hardware. If you do, that’s OK, Google Maps will use that information for your blue dot. But if you don’t it will approximate where you are using the cell tower you are connected to at the time - in which case you’ll get a light blue circle around your dot.

If you do have a GPS-enabled device, My Location can actually complement it. My Location kicks in faster than GPS in most cases, so you can access your location even faster on the map. It also works reliably indoors (unlike GPS) and doesn’t drain your phone battery at the rate that GPS does.

Here are the currently supported phones:

• Most Java-enabled (J2ME) mobile phones.
• Palm devices with Palm OS 5 and above.
• All color BlackBerry devices.
• Windows Mobile devices with Windows Mobile 2003, 5.0 and above.
• Symbian Series 60 3rd edition devices.

The new service is still in beta and may not be available everywhere. Check out the video:

If you want an expensive GPS embedded gadget you should look into the CPC 1100 GPS XLT which is a diffraction limited Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope. It’ll set you back about $2900 but think of all the girls you can impress with your 11″ lens.

The CPC 1100 GPS has a database of over 40,000 objects is fully computerized and has high-end features such as hibernate which lets the telescope maintain its star alignment night after night without needing to be re-aligned.

In case you are wondering the GPS is for automatically downloading the date and time from orbiting satellites and pinpointing its exact location on Earth to eliminate the need for you to manually enter the date, time, longitude and latitude. Once the CPC’s position is established aligning the telescope is easy.

Simply locate and use hand control to manually point (slew) the telescope to three bright celestial objects. You do not need to know the names of the stars — you may even pick the moon or bright planets! Celestron’s NexStar software technology will model the night sky to determine the position of every star, planet and celestial object above the horizon. Once aligned, the remote hand control allows direct access to each of the celestial catalogs in its user-friendly database.

While the holiday season is saturated with GPS navigation systems from big brand names Navigadget would like to remind you that there are other brands out there. Konaki is one of those names but it maybe not as easy to find as the big names.

Priced at $200 at Amazon, Konaki offers a standard 3.5″ screen, an extension slot for SD cards, 20-channel GPS Module, and a 1200 mAh Li-Ion battery. It comes pre-loaded with latest mapping data for the United States on a 1GB memory card.

It doesn’t quite compare with the Black Friday deals you missed such as the Maestro 3100 for $140, or the TomTom ONE 3rd Ed. for $125.

It turns out the GPS we mentioned on Ahtec X60GT last time wasn’t quite embedded but it comes as an external accessory that you can attach when you need it. Same is also true for the TV module. The only advantage to having an external GPS receiver we can think of is that your UMPC will be lighter and maybe use less power when GPS is not attached.

As you can see in the picture (sitting upside down on the table) the GPS add-on can flip out to get better reception just like the TV module… via

Cobra’s latest and greatest GPS navigation system is the Cobra GPSM 5000 which boasts a 5″ ultra-bright, OptiView touchscreen as well as a POI database that contains close 8 million entries.

Cobra GPSM 5000 comes with maps of all 50 states in the U.S. plus Canada preloaded and ready to use and it can guide (voice or text) in English, French, or Spanish. On-board software can provide an alternate route and then let you visually compare 2 routes on your map screen and choose the one you prefer.

Other smart features include the ‘SmartPower’ which turns off the sat nav system when the ignition is turned off and the ‘my favorite brands’ which lets you choose over 600 brands and show them as icons on your route.

Manufacturer’s suggested price is $510 but it seems to be out of stock for now.