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Posts from — May 2008

Garmin nuvi 5000 Gets Reviewed

by Justin

Garmin nuvi 5000

Garmin’s nuvi 5000, with a 5.2-inch screen one of the largest widescreen GPS devices currently available is built specifically for drivers of larger vehicles such as truck drivers.  Meant to stand-out on a sizable windshield, the nuvi 5000 is pretty hefty and not really suitable for portable use thanks to its size and lack of internal battery.  This one has to be hooked up to an external power source such as your vehicle’s cigarette ligther.  The 5.2-inch display has an auto-dimming feature and has a pretty fine 800 x 480 pixels displaying an interface pretty well ubiquitous among Garmin devices.  The unit comes with an easy-to-use suction cup mount through which data and power connections are run, keeping that whole wire mess at a minimum.  It comes preloaded with Navteq maps of the US, Canada and Puerto Rico, but you’re SOL for live traffic unless you decide to spend the extra coin on a separate FM TMC or MSN Direct receiver.  Other features though are largely disappointing.  While the Garmin nuvi 5000 does have text-to-speech, it’s missing Bluetooth for hands-free calls, but manages to fit in some multimedia features such as a photo viewer, mp3 player and audible ebook reader.

If you do like what you see, the Garmin nuvi 5000 is available at Amazon as of this article’s writing for $300 off its regular price meaning you’ll pay $556.94.

via pcmag

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May 31, 2008   1 Comment

Broadcom Supplying 3G iPhone With GPS?

by Justin

Apple\'s 3G GPS iPhone Coming June 9?We’ve been following the 3G iPhone GPS integration rumors for a bit now and they’ve continued as expected.  As the June 9 Apple WWDC gets closer, GigaOm is reporting that Broadcom has landed the contract to supply GPS to the iPhone.  Now if the expected 3G/GPS iPhone announcement does pan out come June 9, it could have some drastic ramifications for the portable GPS market.  And not just because it’ll have native GPS navigational capabilities, but because the iPhone SDK currently in its sixth beta version is also supposed to have an official June release.

If you’re not up on the latest iPhone developer news, a $100 million fund, the iFund, provided by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers will surely entice developers to come up with some innovation location-based applications for the 3G iPhone.  Combine this with the upcoming release of Google’s Android mobile browser and its location-aware potential and we have a potentially lethal mix for companies such as Garmin and TomTom.  Now we’re starting to agree with Om Malik’s prediction that the portable navigation market could face some strain in the near future.

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May 31, 2008   2 Comments

Will GPS Drawings, Position Art Proliferate Thanks To Big Fake Erik Nordenenkar?

by Justin

Now that the world’s biggest fake has been outed, all of the best GPS art from around the globe is starting to pop up around the web.  In fact we came across a couple of more GPS drawings just today.  The first is the GPS Easter Bunny, done by Peter Rullman in Saarbrücken, Germany using a Nokia N82 mobile phone and the Nokia Sports Tracker application.  Created on Easter Sunday this year, Rullman, inspired by the position art hero Stavros, took a walk around Saarbrücken with his N82 and posted his easter bunny route onto Google Maps.  Check out a slideshow of his walk here, and a rough screenshot of the Google Maps rendering below:

Easter Bunny Position Art

Wired.com’s Gadget Lab has highlighted the work of a couple other legit GPS artists: Esther Polak and Antti Laitinen.  Esther Polak, who’s been in the position art world for 6 years now, uses GPS to track the movements of her subjects as they go about their daily lives.

Esther Polak GPS Drawing

While Polak’s work tends to border on the abstract, Laitinen’s work has a focus on applying the self-portrait to real-world travels.  Laitinen’s will actually physical draw a self-portrait on a map of European terrain and then set out with a GPS recorder in tow to replicate his actual drawing.  It doesn’t always work out so well as you can see below:

An Antti Laitinen GPS Self-Portrait

Thanks to Erik Nordenenkar, we expect position art to proliferate.  We’ll probably see tons more GPS drawings in the near future.  And if your interest is now piqued and you’d like to do one of your own, check out this great tutorial, written by Mark Guim over at The Nokia Blog, about how to use Nokia Sports Tracker and an N-Series Nokia phone to make your own GPS-based position art.