The Mio H610 is designed for compact travel and portability. You can use it anywhere, wherever you are, whatever you do. Walking, jogging, driving almost anything you can think of. Its display is a touch screen with 65,000 colours and 320 x 240 pixel resolution. It is a bit difficult to see under the sunlight but apart from that, the display is clear and bright.
To use the GPS you will have to bring out the onscreen keyboard. It can be easily customized according to your preferences. You can program it to avoid dirt roads and ferrie,s etc. This device also has a full feature MP3 player. It comes with a 11 presets graphic equalizer and a bundle of games: Fireball, Gem, Plumbin, Flux etc.
This device has 2 GB of internal memory but still it is upgradeable with SD cards making it very neat. The travel kit comes with a compass and a 3 year subscription to WorldMate travel application.
Topcon Positioning Systems and Whipsaw have cooperated to design the sexiest GPS receiver. Topcon GR3, which won an award at the recent International Forum, is the result of this joint venture.
Although it looks more like a torch light than a GPS receiver, it is the perfect tool if you are in need of pin point accuracy. It uses 36 satellites to give you accurate coordinates as close as possible. It also allows user to locate points at high precision. What more with this device is that you can also get data on the shape, contour, location, elevation or dimension of land or land features.
This device is shock proof as well as weather proof. It is built for rugged environment and is able to resist fall from a range pole. It incorporates Bluetooth wireless technology and a hot swappable SD card memory. Looking at the price, I cannot say much but it will be sold for around for a hefty $22,000.
Audiovox’s Jensen NVXM 1000 GPS navigator was just revealed at the beginning of this year. It is ready to be released for consumers in the US and just got its FCC approval last week.
Just by looking at the user manual, this device has a set of nice features. It is powered by Atlas II 300 Mhz CPU and come preinstalled with Windows CE v5.0. It has HDD storage of 8 GB which is pretty impressive for a navigational system and a 4 inch touchscreen display supporting 16.7 million colours. High Speed USB support makes data transfer easy.
It is powered by a Li-Ion 3.7V 2400mA battery. Apart from its built in HDD, you have the option to increase its storage by using SD or MMC card. The A/V input jacks supports back up cameras. The only thing missing is Bluetooth from this device. Judging from its price tag of $800, I would dare not say it is not a worthy buy nor would I say it is not worth buying. You will have to judge for yourself.
Magellan Maestro is the new middle class release of the Series 4000 line of widescreen GPS navigation systems from Magellan. The newly redesign interface is very much welcome as opposed to the cartoonish interface in the previous models. Magellan Maestro 4040 comes preloaded with maps and SiRF star III chipset, text to speech capability and Bluetooth pairing for handsfree phone calls. Pretty impressive, right? It sure is.
The redesigned hardware and software will definitely be attracting attention since it will be something new with special notes on the large 4.3 inch screen. The new user interface and the AAA TourBook integration will also be something to talk about this new device. The Bluetooth Phone integration is not as good as the current state of the art Garmin systems but the large screen, fresh new user interface and AAA’s TourBook functionality coupled with great price covers up for it.
OpenGTS is an open source GPS fleet tracking solution. And yes, it is free as in you do not have to pay anything for it. This is an alternative for companies which are tight on budget to get things running and embrace new technologies.
As all open source software, it is not expected to provide customer service and you will have to find your own solution in case anything goes wrong. It uses Google Maps interface but their site says that other mapping interfaces are also supported. It can be used to provide arrival and departure information which are useful to keep track of what is going on with their fleet. OpenGTS supports devices using Open DMTP which is an Open Device and Tracking Protocol. The system can currently be used with the Palm Treo 650 and HP hw 6945. More and more devices supporting this service are expected to emerge in the market soon.
Houdah releases a Geocoding software for Mac OS X. HoudahGeo 1.0.2 allows photographers to import images and GPS data tracks and automatically attaches the location information to the photo. It also enables users to manually tag photographs with a location when GPS is not available by clicking Google Maps interface. Images can also be matched to GPS waypoints for more precise encoding.
HoudahGeo integrates with iPhoto and Aperture to enable photos to be exported in Google Earth files for displaying photos online in Google Earth. The image can also be uploaded to various photo hosting sites such as Flickr. The software is available for a market price of $24.95 for single user license and $49.95 for group license. Students have a special offer with price at $12.45. There are also trial versions available if you would like to try it out before deciding whether or not to purchase it.
Ever wish you can be something like the spy in your favourite movie and spying on someone else without their knowledge. All that you will need is a WM phone with GPS and a data connection. GPSGate is a small software that you can install in your Windows Mobile devices. It is recommended that it is installed in a phone edition for the always on data capabilities. The setup is pretty simple as you just have to download the installer or the cab file to run it.
The unique feature that GPSGate has is it enables you to use multiple GPS application with the same GPS device. Follow the instructions to set up everything and you will have your own tracking device. It makes use of GPS coordinates and active connection as well as Google Maps for the feature. Before anything is done, you will have to register yourself at GPSGate website.
USA is the only country in the world that has a fully functional GPS system for itself. It has been with them since the 1960s. It started as a military project but it was open for civilian usage in 1993 at no cost at all. President Ronald Reagan makes the suggestion after a Korean civil aircraft strayed into Russian airspace and was shot down. It has proved itself beneficial especially to the military as it plays its role to great effect in the Gulf wars.
Other powers are keen to launched their own GPS system with the European Commission and European Space Agency launching a similar technology they called Galileo Project. The project is expected to be fully operational by 2011. Russia has also come along with their own system called GLONASS. It has been there since 1982 but now they have decided to revive it. China also has come into the picture with their recent boom with a system they will call Compass. If all goes well, it will be the end of US monopoly in the GPS segment.
This new models by Magellan sport a 3.5-inch QVGA display which is big enough even for dumb drivers like me. Sure some people will go for the more expensive 4000 Series but at least this 3100 won’t burn a hole in your pocket.
Maestro 3100 shorts:
- SiRF Star III GPS chips
- integrated antenna and battery
- SmartDetour feature to help drivers route around freeway traffic
- QuickSpel, which checks the spelling of data entries
It will be out this month for $299.
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The convergence of devices is great for the consumer, as we only have to carry one single device which does all the functions we expect. The Pocket LOOX T Series is an example of this convergence, as this smartphone combines a mobile, a PDA with Windows Mobile (and all its support for multimedia and office files) and a GPS receiver.
Equipped with a SiRFstar III chipset there are few more things you could ask from it, well apart from a reduced price. Comes with an Intel PXA270 processor at 416 MHz, 54 MB of RAM, 128 MB of flash memory and 2.4’’ touchscreen.
