GPS obsessed

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

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.

Related Points Of Interest

• May 14, 2008 — Swisscom Lands Rumored GPS-Enabled 3G iPhone For Switzerland
• June 12, 2008 — Apple Cuts Real-Time Navigational Apps From Developers
• June 9, 2008 — 3G iPhone Gets AGPS, Costs $199, Hits 22 Countries July 11
• June 2, 2008 — Griffin’s WindowSeat iPhone Vehicle Mount An Early Solution For GPS-Enabled iPhone
• May 28, 2008 — iPhone 2.0 Features Geotagging; Will June 9 Bring A 3G iPhone With GPS

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 Saarbracken, 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 Saarbracken 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:

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.

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:

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.

Sanyo has a couple new GPS devices headed for Japan. The NVA-MS1280DT and NVA-MS1180DT both feature internal solid state drives for storing media such as video and music that can be played back in DTS-HD or Dolby. The NVA-MS1280DT features a 8GB of storage, a 4GB SSD and 4GB SD card, as well as a built-in DVD player while the NVA-MS1180DT features a 4 GB SSD. While the memory capacity may not seem like much, SSD are much more reliable at playing back media files in a vibrating vehicle, whereas typical HDD aren’t so reliable. Both devices feature 7-inch touchscreens, the usual GPS capabilities, an FM receiver for traffic reports, and iPod support. Sanyos’ next-gen GPS devices will be out in June for $1750 and $1500 respectively.

via akihabara news

The rumored 3G iPhone announcement expected June 9 will hopefully include GPS support and we think it will. Especially because the latest iPhone Software 2.0 beta update includes a bunch of new features including a 3G on/off switch and geotagging support. The geotagging support will use the iPhone’s built-in Google Maps location finder to ask you if you’d like to geotag any photo with any picture taken with your iPhone.

via macrumors

Wow, the things some artists will do in pursuit of their creative passion. Stockholm, Sweden-based August Zachrisson packed a GPS device inside a briefcase, handed it over to shipper DHL with an extensive list of shipping locations and over 55 days traveled through 6 continents and 62 countries culminating in this:

A 110664 km long self-portrait of the artist generated from all of the trip’s GPS info uploaded to Zachrisson’s computer. Biggest GPS Drawing

The world’s biggest GPS drawing is nothing more than a hoax! Artist Erik Nordenankar has admitted now that his giant drawing created by a GPS unit shoved in a suitcase and shipped all over the world is just one big fake. Facing pressure by blogger wondering why DHL (the shipping company he used) planes did so many loop-to-loop’s over the Atlantic and seemed to make pitstops in the middle of the water, Nordenankar admitted the hoax after DHL confirmed it was nothing more than a fictional project. DHL claims it gave Nordenankar access to film in their Stockholm warehouse, but the GPS unit never went any further than that. It was simply meant to be nothing more than a conceptual art project and it was never to get beyond the art school the, BS’er was attending. I must say though, this is one intelligent marketing ploy if you happen to be a starving artist looking for attention.

via telegraph

The Geotagger, a concept design from Japanese designer Takumi Yoshida, takes the concept of social bookmarking on the web and moves it into the real world. The Geotagger allows you to bookmark places much as you would bookmark pages on the web. Yoshida calls his geotagging concept “physical social bookmarking on-the-go” and I for one hope he turns this concept into reality.

via dvice

XPIN’s TX-8000 in-dash DMB navigation system is headed for Korea in early June, from Dae Kyung EMD. Featuring a 6.95-inch 800×480 WVGA display, the XPIN TX-8000 runs on a Marvell PXA320(806MHZ) CPU, features Mappy United map software; 3D, day, and night driving modes; support for T-DMB; and PIP and MIP functionality. Multimedia features include DVD, mp3, and radio playback and connectivity options include a built-in USB 2.0 host.

via aving

Geotagging photos is slowly moving mainstream and as such only certain digital photo devices contain built-in GPS chips that automatically pick up location info when pictures are taken.  The problem with these devices such as digital cameras is that automatic geotagging sucks battery power dry like a Dirt Devil sucks crumbs off the kitchen floor.  Now a UK-based Philips Research spinoff known as Geotate claims it can make the process of geotagging a whole lot more energy efficient.

The Geotate approach, called Capture and Process, collects only a small amount of info from satellites.  The info, rather than being processed in the camera, is processed using a Geotate software program when uploaded to a computer.  That way no GPS chip is required to be embedded in the camera, or whatever digital picture-taking device you happen to be using, getting rid of the battery-draining processing in the process.

Capture and Process is alot faster than the usual GPS chip approach as well.  Because it only captures a small amount of positioning info from GPS satellites and does no internal processing, the almost ubiquitous 30 second GPS lock time is reduced to 200 milliseconds.  The info is stored in the camera’s memory and then processed on the computer by comparing the satellite info to a Geotate database of historic satellite positioning satellite.  This process only requires 10 millijoules of energy, roughly 1% of the energy required by GPS chip processing.

Capture and Process add-ons for digital cameras should be available by the end of 2008.

via technologyreview