Archive for August, 2009

GPS navigation for the PSP: Minna No Nabi

Aug 31, 2009 , ,

SONY-PSP-GPS

Well this is a bit too late isn’t it? Considering we’ve been talking about GPS navigation on Sony PSP for literally years now, and since then the new Sony PSP Go has come out.

Well all we can say is better now then never. Announced by Zenrin in Japan Minna No Nabi is a GPS navigation system software for the PSP 1000/2000 and 3000 Series (yep, no go for PSP Go).

When it will be released in Japan on Nov 5th it will go for about 8200 Yen ($85) – the GPS module is not included…

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , ,

PocketMap X for iPhone

Aug 30, 2009 ,

People at Space Machine just recently revealed a video of an application called PocketMap X. PocketMap X is what you may call a “free roaming 3D location browser”. You can drive through streets over a map, or fly over a city on a plane. To change your direction you just tilt your iPhone left and right.

You can increase your speed with the touch control on the right hand side of the screen and change your altitude from the left side.

How is this useful? We’re not sure. But it has to be useful for something other than entertainment. Check it out. This sneak peak video is pretty awesome:

Tags: ,

Nokia N900 is here

Aug 30, 2009 , , ,

We already told you about Nokia N900 when it was only a 3D rendering, and talked about it when it made it through FCC which proved us it also had GPS features. Just a couple of days ago the company made the Nokia N900 official. What are the highlights of the N900? Well, Nokia decided to load this device Maemo 5 OS which is completely Linux based – which means a lot for all the true geeks out there. It also promises a very decent web browsing experience with Mozilla technology and full Adobe Flash 9.4 support. Speaking of internets, we have to mention how connected Nokia N900 is. It does fast internet connectivity with 10/2 HSPA and WLAN – currently supporting 900/1700/2100 MHz. Of course there’s bluetooth too.

Other features of Nokia N900 include the 3.5″ touch screen with 800×480 resolution, 5MP camera with flash and Carl Zeiss lens, integrated GPS, 1GB of memory, physical slide-down keyboard, 600 MHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor, 1320mAh battery, 32GB of storage which can be expanded to 48 via the microSD card slot, and the OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics acceleration.

Did we mention it is a phone too? :) Yeah, you can call your friends with the Nokia N900.

How much will the Nokia N900 will cost you? When it comes out in October in selected markets it will go for about 500 Euros.

In the US this would be just over $700. Oh and the 1700Mhz means you can get this on T-Mobile. Nice.

nokia-n900

Tags: , , ,

MeetMe App for the iPhone

Aug 29, 2009 , , , ,

meetme-1
How often do you need to meet a friend and look for a location halfway between so it is fair for the both parties. Well, there’s an app for that. It is called MeetMe. Currently ranked Apple’s fourth most popular navigation application, MeetMe integrates all the info from Yelp, while providing a really sharp visual interface.

Meetme is basically a tool that lets people to select a meeting point between two locations. First, the user sets Points A and B by choosing current location, an address from the contact list, keypad entry, or a stored favorite. The next step is to define the type of meeting place desired: restaurant, hotel, movie theater, park or other alternatives provided by the Yelp API. The app then displays a list of matching results approximately halfway between Points A and B. A slider control quickly allows the user to refine the search results by looking for other meeting places closer to either Point A or Point B. After the user finalizes the destination, he or she can email directions to the meeting place from Point A, Point B or both.

MeetMe costs $2.



Tags: , , , ,

TomTom car kit almost here

Aug 28, 2009 , , , ,

tomtom-car-kit
We’ve been following this TomTom car kit for a while now (such as here, here, here, and here). Well it looks like we’re almost at the end of the road. Just today TomTom car kit got its approval from FCC, meaning it is ready to come out in the U.S of A. very very soon.

If you’ve been living under a rock for the last few months, here is the run down: TomTom is getting ready to release this car kit for their iPhone GPS navigation app which should enhance users’ experience since the device contains its own GPS receiver, charges your iPhone, has bluetooth for hands free calls, and can use your car’s stereo for driving directions.

Check out the user manual for the TomTom car kit (pdf).

Tags: , , , ,

Snooper Lynx GPS

Aug 28, 2009 ,

lynx-snooper
The British brand Snooper is not really new to Navigadget. We’ve talked about them here before. However they have something newsworthy of mentioning here again. It is called Snooper Lynx GPS. What makes the Lynx special is that in addition to warning you about speed traps, and cameras, it also has a GPRS module to provide you with real time traffic udpates. Also with the touch of a button it lets users of the device share the location of mobile police speed traps and other mobile elements in real time – as soon as the police gets situated at an intersection.

Of course since the device is connected your speed camera locations are always up to to date and you never have to go back to your PC to update it.

It costs £194.

Tags: ,

waze to force close

Aug 28, 2009 , ,

waze-gps
Well we gave Waze a try for the last couple of days and it wasn’t that great. Before we go into detail lets first talk about what Waze is for. The idea behind Waze is to crowd source a lot of things, mostly live traffic updates, but also including map generation/correction, reporting hideouts for police, etc, etc.

We installed the new app on our Android just recently and got it to work. For a while that is… before it decided force close – multiple times. While the app was running we saw that the speed at which it downloads maps is very slow. Sometimes you’re just staring at a blank map. Could it be our own network speed? Don’t think so. Google Maps was working just fine at the time.

Also finding a destination address wasn’t very easy. We had to enter the address correct down to the comma and even then it took a while to find it. The first 3 times we tried this Waze just decided not respond and force close.

We still went ahead and used the application. Once we had our route setup Waze correctly identified a traffic congestion on our way. Since we had no other route at the time we drove right into the congestion and decided to report the situation. This was a breeze. Waze is actually pretty good at collecting data from you. It is just not very good at running smoothly. When you’re reporting a certain event you even have the option the snap a photo and upload it.

Oh, one more thing. After we force closed out of Waze the last time, it just didn’t turn off the GPS receiver – consuming lots and lots of battery for no reason.

Even though Waze is not yet ready for prime time (at least for the Android platform) the promise of Waze is still pretty good. Think about it. All the maps on Waze are user generated. All the traffic info is also user generated. This could be big – once the glitches in their software are fixed and they have more people using it.

And one last thing. Now Google is also crowd sourcing their live traffic updates.

Tags: , ,

Palm Pre tweets GPS coordinates

Aug 27, 2009 , ,

Do you want your Palm Pre to tweet its location on a regular basis? Now you can. But you’ll have to do some “hacking” as one might call it. Before anything you’ll have to setup SSH and dynamic DNS on your Pre. Does that mean anything to you? OK, here is a simple test. If the next line scares you, maybe you should not mess with your Palm Pre:

< ?php
$gps = `luna-send -n 1 palm://com.palm.location/getCurrentPosition {} 2>&1 | cut -d, -f4,5 | sed -r ’s/[^-\.0-9,]//g’`;

What? You can write shorter regular expression that does the same thing? Well… here are the rest of the instructions.

Tags: , ,

Mivvy One

Aug 27, 2009 ,

mivvy-one
Mivvy, a mobile phone makes from the Czech Republic just announced a new smartphone called Mivvy One.

Mivvy One runs on WinMo 6.1 with a custom user interface but offers no 3G support. What good is that?

Some specs include 3.2″ TFT display with 240×400 resolution, GPS receiver, WiFi, Bluetooth, and FM antennas, 3MP camera, and a microSD card slot.

Mivvy One will be available for 6700CZK in Czech Land which is about $380…

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: ,

Amber Alert GPS 2G

Aug 27, 2009 ,

amber-alert-gps-tracking
Amber Alert GPS today launched the Amber Alert GPS 2G, a GPS child tracking device. The device allows for parents to create a virtual safe zone, follow their kids bread crumb trail, and be alerted when their child reaches their destination. It even has voice monitoring, and even the ability to monitor the speed of a vehicle your child is riding in. There’s also the usual panic button that almost all live GPS tracking devices has.

The device itself costs a whopping $400 and you can pay between $10 to $60 for the service charge.

We think it is quite costly.

Tags: ,

« Older Entries