March 18, 2010
- Flexing their muscles on data acquisition, TomTom was cited in the Wall St Journal in reference to average speed limits on highways state by state. So while the article is interesting in that most states have average speeds a lot higher than 55MPH, and many states have raised the legal speed limit either as a forethought or in reaction to the reality, I think that the cool GPS story here is that TomTom is starting to think of themselves as a data collection and analysis company. These types of...
- Garmin is going to be asking shareholders to approve a move of their umbrella company from the Cayman Islands to Switzerland. If approved the move is said to help with strategic location for growing their European business, and of course the murky world of tax favorability. The number crunchers must have been busy with this one, but I would imagine that with European acquisitions in recent years, their critical mass on that continent makes for a compelling balance sheet change. As part of the...
March 17, 2010
- The Garmin-Asus nϋvifone G60 is the featured phone on the new season of " The Celebrity Apprentice ." The first episode debuted Sunday night. If you were able to watch the premier, you may have caught a glimpse of the nϋvifone in action. If not, it's sure to be on future episodes and we'll keep you posted on future nϋvifone sightings. In the first episode, several of the celebrities used the nϋvifone as they drummed up support for their first contest -- running their own diner. Baseball's...
- I once knew a girl in college who was studying to be a pilot. She was very quiet, shy and for the most part had a habit of disappearing into the people surrounding her. She shocked me one day when she said she had over 20 solo jumps to her name and was a certified parachute rigger. My conversation with her taught me that skydivers are extremely passionate about their sport. For those interested in the sensations of a freefall, Garmin has included parachute jumping areas in several of our...
- Garmin is skinning the their Garmin Edge 500 cycling computer with the team colors - argyle in honor of the Team Garmin biking colors. The team that features Christian Vendevelde will unveil the new design along with a more calm black and white treatment in May at the Tour de California. Looks like a nice design on the Edge that is a solid performance minded biking computer. It is a low profile bike GPS that has data galore, and no on screen mapping. The unit tracks speed, distance, time, GPS...
- Magellan will be announcing a new handheld next week – the eXplorist GC, which is designed specifically for geocaching. I’ll have a full review up soon but I wanted to go ahead and give you a sneak peek. The eXplorist GC is set up for full paperless caching, meaning there’s no need to print out a bunch of info from geocaching.com before heading out. Perhaps the nicest feature in this respect is the ability to sort / filter caches in just about any way and combination you can imagine. As you can...
- Navigon has announced a new way to get their iPhone navigation - Mobile Navigator with regional maps. Don't need the whole US? Why pay for it is the idea. The limited mapset comes at a limited price - Navigon Mobile Navigator with MyRegion for $25; additional regions are $13. The US is divided up into three regions: Eastern, Central and Western - and they all download to the iPhone upon purchase, but you only get access to the region you bought. Need another region - buy it in the App, and get...
- Panasonic of Japan today introduced 5 new portable and 3 in-dash Strada GPS navigation systems. The portable ones come with either a 5″ or a 7″ touch screen display and all come with 8GB of RAM, 1Seg digital TV tuner, and VICS traffic control on the higher end models. Some of the new portable sat nav devices are: CN-SP300L-K CN-MP700VD-K CN-MP500VD-K The in-dash GPS navigation systems on the other hand come with a 60GB HDD, DVD, CD support, 7″ WVGA display, and cost between...
- GPS travelogue is a neat little device to help you record point by point your travels and your expeditions. It is a fairly simple device. Basically you click whenever you want ( it is so small, fitting to your palm) and i-gotU records those points on its internal memory. That memory is 64MB. Then all your real time records can be uploaded to your computer. i-gotU’s software will show your exact route via Google maps app. Plus, since you clicked your little i-gotU when you take those...
March 16, 2010
- Spring is around the corner and that means that mariners everywhere are getting ready to tune up their electronics to perform in tip-top shape when the weather turns and the fish start biting. We know that in addition to some seasonal fine-tuning, those on the water also want to have the most-up-to-date charts available. So today, just in time for spring, we released the 2010 versions of our BlueChart g2 and BlueChart g2 Vision marine cartography. Our unique BlueCharts make it easy to see and...