Tele Atlas Adds Reality To Navigation With 3d

Tele Atlas announced this morning that it will be adding 3D Advanced City Models to its portfolio of mapping innovations. Advanced City Models use BLOM aerial imagery to create a photorealistic map that crosses over more accurately to the real world, in essence making navigation simpler. For now, it looks like Tele Atlas will focus mainly on big city centers with a release in Europe next month, followed by more cities in subsequent quarterly releases.

The TomTom-owned digital mapping powerhouse says it expects to cover hundreds of cities with Advanced City Models in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific by 2010. Tele Atlas maps are used on TomTom, Mio and Pioneer portable navigation devices, as well as Sony’s PSP and Google’s navigation products.

Air Force Space Command Committed To Gps Health

The U.S Air Force and Air Force Space Command (AFSPC) have been the diligent stewards of GPS since its conception in the 1970s and continue its commitment to this critical component of our National Infrastructure, stated the agencies today in a press release from Peterson Air Force Base.

Skyhook Adds Cell Towers

Skyhook Wireless has unveiled XPS 2.0, its next-generation hybrid positioning system that combines signals from cellular broadcast towers to its hybrid Wi-Fi and GPS system.

Gps Performance Document Updated

The National Executive Committee for Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) has released an updated civil GPS Standard Positioning Service Performance Standard, committing the United States Department of Defense (DoD) to an improved level of GPS accuracy for civilian signals.

Maestro 4700 Gps

Rich Owings of the excellent GPS Tracklog publication did some digging through the FCC database and of all things he found the Magellan Maestro 4700. We haven’t seen anything substantial from Magellan in a while as it’s undergone some consolidation after being purchased by MiTAC, also the parent of Mio. So this surprised me, but FCC filings don’t lie. According to the user manual (PDF), the latest Maestro will support voice commands, have a 4.7-inch OneTouch user interface, Bluetooth and traffic alerts. Nothing special by the looks of it. Magellan hasn’t announced a price or release date (or anything at all for that matter) but I’m sure it’ll come in short order.

Medion Gopal P4445

MEDION GoPal P4445 is quite new in Europe. It offers an unusual flat screen measuring 4.7″, maps of Europe (Q4/2008), Traffic Message Channel receiver, 2GB internal memory, text-to-Speech, MP3 player, Bluetooth, and even a fingerprint sensor. The GPS receiver is SiRF starIII which comes with SiRFInstantFixII. All the heavy weight is lifted by the Samsung 400 MHz processor.

What makes Medion GoPal 4445 more high-end than most other devices out there is the voice commands capability. In order to keep your hands on the wheel, the GPS navigation system can be controlled easily by voice whether it is address input, volume or traffic information – the device understands a variety of commands.

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Mobiado Grand 350prl

Mobiado has a new luxury phone out called Grand 350PRL. We do not really care too much about these luxury phones unless they have a GPS receiver. Mobiado Grand 350PRL - which was just announced today - has a good set of features which integrates a GPS receiver.

The device comes unlocked and will work anywhere within the GSM/EGSM 850/900/1800/1900 network range. It also does HSDPA, come with 3.5MP camera, has a sharp 2.36″ screen, bluetooth, and a micro USB card reader.

Not sure where you can pick one of these up or for how much but if we do we’ll let you know… via

Drawing With Gps In Bmw Ads

Tomtom Xl 340s Live

TomTom just announced TomTom XL 340S Live. This is a mid-range GPS navigation system from the company with connected services. It will go for $300 which will include 3 months live connected services which we just mentioned. These include things like local search from Google, real-time traffic updates, weather information, and the cheapest fuel prices around.

TomTom XL 340S Live has a 4.3″ touch screen and is quite similar to the TomTom XL 740 Live. However it lacks bluetooth connectivity for hands free calling – and the live services are on AT&T’s network.

Another cool feature with this new GPS navigation system is that it uses TomTom QuickGPSfix which utilizes A-GPS to get a satellite location fix faster.

The connected services for TomTom XL 340S Live will cost $10/month after the first month.

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New Gps Satellite Launching In 4 Days

Delta II is ready to launch the Air Force’s Global Positioning System IIR-20 on March 24 from Cape Canaveral Florida. Called GPS IIR-20M, this is the seventh modernized NAVSTAR Global Positioning System Block II R-M military navigation satellite to launch.

IIR-20M satellite carries the new frequency channel L5 demo which is the first of its kind and no other orbiting GPS satellites have the capability to transmit on this frequency.

This is kind of critical for the U.S. since their future plans for GPS are mostly based on this L5 signal. And if the launch gets delayed past August 26th of this year they’ll lose their rights to use that frequency.

Brought to you by your GPS navigation site NaviGadget.

Gpslogger Now Version 1.5

Back in June this app was at version 0.4 but just a couple of days ago people at emacberry announced version 1.5 of the popular GPS tracking application for Blackberry phones. It is called GPSLogger and it will work with devices OS 4.2.1 or higher. It is completely free and is under GNU General Public License.

Here are some of the things you can do:

• Record your your movement over time
• Path View: Displays the traveled path in a x/y coordinate system (2D-View)
• Elevation View: Displays the change of altitude over time
• Compass View
• “Guide me Home”-Function
• “Distance Alerts/Signal” – the device can beep and vibrate after a user-specified distance
• Night Mode in 4 different colors (yellow, blue, red and green)
• Export recorded paths into CSV, GPX, KML
• Import a path in GPX or KML format

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Palm Eos

According to Engadget this is the new Palm device, Palm Eos. Apparently it is coming to AT&T for $350 before a two year contract - so expect to pay somewhere around $100 if you’re willing to sign some papers.

Palm Eos has an impressive 2.63″ capacitive screen with 320×400 resolution, and the whole device is 10.6mm thin. It only weighs 100 grams and measures 55mm by 111mm.

The full specs include 4GB storage, 2MP camera, bluetooth and micro USB connection, 1150 mAh battery, and of course A-GPS for your navigation needs as well as other location based services.

Brought to you by your GPS navigation site NaviGadget.

Speedometer Gps 1.0 For Palm Os

Speedometer GPS 1.0 is a simple application for the Palm OS. It provides an accurate reading of your speed based on your dislocation determined by the help of GPS satellites and comes with various skins as you can see above.

It has some nice features such as dual odometers, ability to keep track of average and top speed, MPH or KMH, ability to adjust the range of the meter, ability to set a max speed which sets an visual or audible alarm, and more… You can get it here.

Brought to you by your GPS navigation site NaviGadget.

Sirf No More

UK based CSR, the people behind the eGPS technology, and the BlueCore BC7830 which we talked about earlier this month has now bought SiRF. Apparently the transaction totaled to $132.7 million.

CSR and SiRF today entered into a conditional agreement under which SiRF will merge with CSR, increasing the scale of CSR in the high-growth GPS technology market and strengthening CSR’s position as a global leader in both Bluetooth and GPS.

I guess they’ll be competing with Broadcom which just announced their version of GPS+Blutooth+FM combo chip… via

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Mercedes Benz Gps Navigation System For Trucks

Mercedes-Benz just last week announced a new GPS avigation system for some of their trucks; namely Atego, Axor and Actros model series.

This will make European drivers very happy as Mercedes-Benz will be providing TeleAtlas maps (onDVD) for 26 European countries; and 15 languages to choose from for voice directions.

As with any other truck GPS navigation system this one also takes into account the dimensions and weight of the commercial vehicle you’re driving and provides driving route accordingly… via

Brought to you by your GPS navigation site NaviGadget.

Pioneer Avic-z3

Pioneer AVIC-Z3 is a double DIN in-dash HDD based GPS navigation system. It is the most expensive from the manufacturer, with an MSRP of $1800 (however Amazon has Pioneer AVIC-Z3 for $1310). It has some impressive navigation features, so let’s go over those in more detail:

• point addressing: many destinations are geocoded to a precise point instead of an address range.
• 3D landmarks
• high resolution display of traffic conditions
• voice recognition of POIs without having to choose a category
• text-to-speech
• compatible with XM NAVTRAFFIC for live traffic updates

That’s all for navigation but that’s not what Pioneer AVIC-Z3 can do. The device is bluetooth capable so you can pair up a compatible phone. There’s a 30GB HDD, 10GB of which is dedicated to your tunes; and can be accessed with your voice. You can also bring your iPod in and control it using the 7″ touchscreen. Optical drive allows you to play DVDs, rip CDs, and play bunch of other media formats.

Brought to you by your GPS navigation site NaviGadget.

Black Friday Gps Deals

We have now over 40 different black friday GPS deals on our page – and the number just keeps growing. If you’re planning on scoring a GPS navigation system on black friday you have to check out our GPS navigation system deals.

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Htc Magic

HTC Magic is the new Android powered phone from HTC for Vodafone in Europe. The biggest difference from T-Mobile’s G1 is that you don’t get a physical keyboard with HTC Magic. HTC Magic will be available starting in the spring first in UK, Spain, Germany and France and in Italy.

HTC Magic will offer the usual Google suite of applications such as Gmail, Google Maps, Google Search, Google Talk, YouTube, etc, powered and enhanced with the addition of GPS receiver, accelerometer, and the internal compass. You’ve also got POP3 and IMAP email.

Some other hardware features include Wi-Fi, 3G connection, 3.2MP camera, and the 3.2″ screen with 320×480px resolution.

Brought to you by your GPS navigation site NaviGadget.

Telenav Shotgun - Round 2

 

In November right before Turkey Day I did a review of the TeleNav Shotgun. Since then, the TeleNav engineers have been busy churning away and they provided me a new Shotgun with some update and some new added features. Let me start by saying I think the TeleNav Shotgun is an great product. It has a great interface, quality hardware and construction and a strong feature set! The problem with me reviewing a great product, especially a great product a 2nd time is that I tend to get even pickier when I’m using the device. SO, I might make some comments that sound nit-picky but that’s because they are nit-picky! TeleNav has done a great job in making the Shotgun great for most users, so now I’m going to point out the little tweaks I think could make it even better for at least this user. It may not sound fair, but its my $0.02 :)

To recap, the TeleNav shotgun is a a two-way, Internet-connected GPS Navigation device. The new features added in this release are:

• The ability to track miles driven using TeleNav Shotgun. This is great for business travelers who can now save time they may have otherwise spent compiling this information themselves for their expense reports.
• TeleNav Shotgun now also provides customers with ratings and reviews for various points of interest (POIs), including restaurants, hotels and shopping malls, and allows customers to rate the POIs directly from their device.
• Another thing worth mentioning is that that the annoying blue LED I complained about in the first review has been dimmed so its not as bright and noticeable anymore.

Let’s go into some more detail no the first added feature. With one click, users can track the miles driven on their TeleNav Shotgun device.

The entire route can be tracked or the driver can start and stop tracking miles at any time when receiving turn-by-turn navigation or while in map ‘follow me’ mode. Using the My TeleNav website, users can view and download reports in Microsoft Excel or Adobe PDF files. The mileage data will remain online at My TeleNav for up to 24 months.

The second new feature is the Business Rating & Reviews. These ratings are based on a 5-star scale. When you search for a business you will see its rating and have the ability to rate it yourself as the following pictures show. I will highlight that the Search feature on the TeleNav Shotgun is very good. Everything I’ve looked for, including business that aren’t restaurants has been found. It found my Physical Therapy once I entered the the first few letters of the name with ease and the search is quick.

Now that the new features have been reviewed I’ll discuss some of the other aspects of the TeleNav Shotgun I may have not talked about previously or didn’t notice my first go-around with the unit.

I discovered an interesting ‘feature’ with this device. If my SIM card door was not closed all the way I would loose my Internet connection. What I noticed was that when I was driving down the highway, some days the Shotgun would tell me to get off at Exit 351, and other days it would tell me to get off at Priest Drive. The difference was when I had an internet connection. Apparently, with an internet connection the device would talk in Exit #’s and otherwise it would use street names. Personally I like both and I think the device should display both, maybe by flashing between the two on the top of the screen.

The only real thing I find lacking on the Shotgun is that I wish it posted the speed limit information on the main screen. The device has access to speed limit information is, because on the Traffic Summary screen it shows what the speed of traffic is, and colors it based on how it relates to what the speed limit is for that road.

In summary, other than the lack of Speed Limit information, I really enjoy using the TeleNav Shotgun. The latest features added are cool and I’m happy they dimmed the Blue LED. It is much less noticeable but I’d still rather it didn’t’ blink. The only thing I really have to complain about is that the power cable plugs into the left side of the unit. Since in the US the driver side is on the left side of the car, I find this slightly annoying because the power cable crosses across my console/radio etc. If it plugged into the right site of the unit it would be more out of the way visually and functionally.

-by Gautam Khattak

Brought to you by your GPS navigation site NaviGadget.