Posts tagged Gps at Switched

Posts with tag gps

Apple Confirms Turn-By-Turn GPS Coming to iPhone

by Nilay Patel, posted Jul 15th 2008 at 9:33AM

There's been a lot of random misinformation about the iPhone 3G floating around out there, like David Pogue's baffling comment that the device's GPS antenna is "too small" to support turn-by-turn directions, and Apple's iPod and iPhone marketing head Greg Joswiak recently sat down with AppScout to clear up some of the confusion.

Greg says that Apple has an internal priority list of features for the iPhone, and that the company went as far down the list with the 3G as it could -- and that copy / paste support simply didn't make the cut. Similarly, there are no technical issues preventing turn-by-turn directions, just other "complicated issues" (read: legal agreements) that need to be sorted out, and Josiwak expects developers to "amaze us." as things "evolve." Hopefully that means that nav app TomTom's got in the labs will evolve its way into the wild sometime soon.

Finally, Joswiak said that he's not aware of any technical reasons an office suite isn't already in the App Store, but that the lack of a cross-application file structure could impede development. Yeah, and maybe the lack of copy / paste, you think? [Source: AppScout]

Stereo Company Installs GPS, Causes $13K in Damage

by Terrence O'Brien, posted Jul 1st 2008 at 4:01PM

The Car Stereo Company Causes $12,398.54 in Damages Installing GPS

Yet another GPS install horror story. This one comes out of of Los Altos, California, where the Car Stereo Company caused over $12,000 in damages to the 1996 BMW M3 of Consumerist reader Brandon.

After Brandon had taken his admittedly aging luxury sedan in for the install, he noticed that hot air was leaking in through his dashboard vents, even when the air conditioner was on. Several attempts were made by the shop to repair the problem, but no progress was made. In fact, it seemed that with every subsequent visit, Brandon found more and more wrong with the car. Brandon requested a refund, but upon noticing language that would relieve the Car Stereo Company of liability if the check were endorsed (sneaky bastards), decided not to cash the check just yet.

After consulting two different repair shops, a BMW specialist and a German car specialist, Brandon had an estimated $12,400 worth of repairs to be done.

Unfortunately, it appears as if there will be no happy ending to Brandon's troubles. First, Brandon tried to go through the shop's insurance company, to no avail. Then Brandon took them to small claims court, only to have the judge find in favor of the Car Stereo Company. Things don't look good, but we're still holding out hope that Brandon will find a favorable resolution to his problem. [Source: The Consumerist]

Broken Gadgets: What to Fix and What to Toss...

Citysense Uses GPS to Show Live Crowd Movement

by Will Safer, posted Jul 1st 2008 at 1:25PM

Do you believe in the wisdom of crowds? Then maybe you need a little CitySense.

This activity aggregator from a Columbia University professor tracks users by the GPS capability of their mobile phones (in this case BlackBerrys, but an application for the iPhone is coming soon) and maps out where everyone is in a city.

The initial use, for business and marketing, is obvious. See where the people go and put your business there. The next use is the clever one, though. Let people see where the hot activity is, match it with their own patterns of movement and travel around the metropolis, and make suggestions of where they might want to go next -- all based on complex algorithms that compile data constantly being uploaded to the CitySense system.

The creator, Tony Jebara, an Associate Professor in Computer Science at Columbia, says CitySense can be used tailored to your own activity. Coming soon is the ability for the system to analyze where you've specifically been and then show you where like-minded people also are likely to tread.

All this movement and information is processed by the Sense Networks Macrosense platform. Jebara says that the information gathered is anonymous and you can delete your history at any time.

One other clever feature: If the CitySense system determines that there are more people than usual up and about in the morning, it can actually adjust its alarm clock to wake you a few minutes early, giving you additional time to navigate traffic or an overwhelmed mass transit system. (Just don't hit that snooze button.) [Source: Citysense via Textually.org.]

Are GPS Devices Making Us Stupid, Too?

by Tim Stevens, posted Jul 1st 2008 at 8:01AM

Last month, we reported on a story about some computer users' fears of Internet access making us increasingly stupid. We're not sure that we necessarily agree with that idea, and we certainly aren't feeling the latest Luddite-tastic claim that GPS-enabled devices are going to make us forget how to get home.

The idea is that people are becoming increasingly reliant on gadgets that tell us how to get from point A to point B, especially with the falling prices of these devices. Apparently, when everyone has one, people will just forget how to get anywhere without them, thus crippling society. We can definitely see that being the case for some inherently directionally-challenged people, but street maps have been around forever, and you don't see too many folks unable to make their morning commutes without consulting one.

It's not unlike the argument that the popularity of cell phones has made us all forget phone numbers -- wait, that one turns out to be pretty spot on!

Regardless, we suggest that you GPS yourself to faraway places without fear readers -- but it might not be a bad idea to turn the thing off every now and again when you're just heading to the corner store. [Source: ABC News]

Garmin DC 30 GPS Dog Collar Turns Hunting Into a Videogame

by Joshua Fruhlinger, posted Jun 27th 2008 at 7:45AM

Here's one for the hunters. Strap the Garmin DC 30 collar onto your hunting dog, fire up your Astro 220 receiver, and you'll not only know where your dog is, but you'll also know if he is running, pointing, or treeing, even in dense cover.

Range is good for up to seven miles, and the tracking even covers the dog's direction so you can figure out where that delicious nubbin of turkey is hiding. The receiver can track up to 10 dogs at once, and the collar is good for 17-36 hours on one charge. The DC 30 is sold separately for $199.99 or for $649.99 as part of an Astro 220 combo, and should be available third-quarter 2008. [Source: PRNewswire]

Getting Dirty With Mio's 'Knight Rider' GPS

by Joshua Fruhlinger, posted Jun 26th 2008 at 3:01PM

We may be a little overexcited about Mio's Knight Rider GPS unit, but we're not about to apologize for that. This is one beautiful union of K.I.T.T. and navigation that was meant to happen since the day LCDs and GPS chips first hung out. With that out of the way, we have some hands-on impressions.

The unit feels solid and small enough to be portable while the screen remains just big enough to be of use. A nice anti-glare coating looks to keep things visible during daylight hours. Yes, standard fare, but this can be a very apropos way to get to that date you've set up with that cutie you met on Hoffspace.

Peep the gallery at Engadget and don't miss the video after the break.

Continue reading Getting Dirty With Mio's 'Knight Rider' GPS

Northern Lights May Increasingly Interfere With GPS

by Will Safer, posted Jun 23rd 2008 at 4:01PM

GPS units are not infallible.

Stories abound of users blindly following poor GPS directions (based on improperly developed maps) onto train tracks, off marked roads, and even into a nasty part of town.

Now, there's a brand new problem: interference from the Northern Lights, or Aurora Borealis, the natural lightshow seen near the Earth's poles when high-speed particles from the Sun hit the atmosphere. The natural light show distorts the signals from Global Positioning Satellites (GPS) that are 12,600 miles overhead. With increasing solar activity expected in the coming years, the bright lights could foul up navigation devices at an increasing rate.

The last peak of solar activity came in 2000, which is before portable navigation devices were popular, so users haven't experienced this kind of interference to date. The next peak is expected in 2012, with increasing activity each year until then.

According to a report in the American Geophysical Union's 'International Journal of Space Weather' (their Summer Fun issue is a must-read), tests conducted in Norway during Northern Light activity showed GPS units were not able to precisely identify the roads the researchers were on. Sometimes the units lost their signal entirely.

The global positioning satellites hover in fixed positions 12,600 miles above sea level. For the portable navigation units that people use in their cars, boats and planes to work, they must be able to receive unimpeded signals from these satellites. When the Northern Lights are in play, the Earth's ionosphere gets "lumpy," rendering the signals inaccurate.

Navigation device makers say this won't cause a dangerous situation for drivers as long as they use common sense while behind the wheel. So, mainly, the same common sense that (we hope) will keep you from driving off the road into a river, either. [Source: Telegraph.co.uk.]

Click here to see other gadgets that go haywire.

New Traffic Monitoring System to Combat Congestion along I-95

by Will Safer, posted Jun 13th 2008 at 6:20PM

When most people think of live traffic monitoring, portable GPS units usually come to mind. In fact, DASH released a product earlier this year that acts as both a transmitter and receiver -- its users actually contribute to the traffic intelligence used by the DASH system to warn drivers of delays and traffic conditions. Obviously, some portable GPS units do offer some kind of traffic alert system, but a new test promises to take traffic monitoring to a previously unseen scale beginning in July.

Traffic data will be collected and processed from more than 2,500 miles of asphalt, stretching from New Jersey to North Carolina, on or around Interstate 95. The data will be collected en masse, taken from over 800,000 GPS devices in delivery vans, trucks, taxicabs and other service vehicles -- as well as from sensors embedded in the actual roadways themselves. Data will even be culled from other passive monitors like EZ Pass and cell phones.

Within three minutes, the data will be sent to state transportation departments, which will then alert drivers via dynamic road signs, 511 phone systems, mobile alerts, and a little thing called the Internet. If successful, the program could eventually be expanded to include the entire East Coast.

Washington-based Inrix has the contract to collect this data during the start of the test. Inrix claims no personal data will be stored on drivers, but of course privacy advocates are concerned about any type of system that tracks the progress of individual drivers.[Source: USA Today and AOL Money]

Best Gear for Road Trips (Video)

by Switched Staff, posted Jun 12th 2008 at 12:15PM

Considering the sky-high prices of gas these days, it's even more important that you get to your summer road trip destinations on time and without getting lost, which is why you should take the excellent GPS navi system we recommend in the above video (a follow-up to our previous round-up of car trip doodads). We also recommend some other gizmos that'll get you where your going in one piece, or at least keep your passengers busy and prevent them from asking if you're 'there yet.' All that said, we were so seduced by the hot Maserati we borrowed to test out all these gadgets that we pretty much forgot about high gas prices -- and our passengers.

Click Here For Even More Great Gifts for Father's Day

GPS Golf Balls Tell You Exactly Where They've Gone

by Peter Mychalcewycz, posted May 27th 2008 at 11:10AM

For many, a day on the golf course is a chance to leave the world behind, commune with nature and drink. Heavily. For others, it is a chance to vent and break things and curse a lot.

Geostate, a British company, doesn't want to change this at all. It justs wants you to be able to tell you where your ball is since you've worm-burned it into the nearest shrubbery. That would be the shrubbery between the white tees and the ladies tees, in case you were wondering. To accomplish this, the company has begun working on a GPS-enabled microchip that would allow a person to know how far and fast the ball has traveled, among other things. In other words, the same technology used to give people driving directions will now help people with their golf game.

This could be useful for people attempting to tweak their game, but one has to wonder where/if Geostate sees a broad market for this.

Of course, that's what they said about pet rocks.

Sigh. [Source: DailyMail]

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Japanese Super-Thief Uses GPS to Steal Rental Cars

by Joshua Topolsky, posted May 23rd 2008 at 5:13PM

A criminal mastermind named Mitsuhisa Kobayashi has been arrested for a series of GPS-related car thefts in Japan. According to reports, Kobayashi was responsible for stealing eight cars in the Hyogo Prefecture, five of which he sold on the internet. The man -- a former auto factory worker -- used two ex-wives to rent the cars, and would then make copies of the keys and install GPS units or cellphones with GPS capabilities inside the vehicles. Kobayashi would use the devices to track the cars' locations, then steal them once they had been moved from the rental firm. Unfortunately, his accomplices used ID's which led the authorities right to his front door. Whoops.

[Source: Yomiuri via GPS Tracking Systems; Thanks, Rich]

GPS Increasingly Found In Law Enforcement's Tool Box

by Terrence O'Brien, posted May 19th 2008 at 12:01PM

GPS isn't just for helping keep you on the right road to nowhere anymore. The satellite system, originally developed by the military, is finding a new home in the arsenal of law enforcement agencies everywhere.

Police departments around the country and globe are strapping GPS bracelets to sex offenders and gang members released on probation, as well as to those arrested repeatedly for domestic violence charges. The units are used as an alternative to incarceration, which can cost upwards of $40,000 per-year, per-inmate. The GPS service, on the other hand, costs only $3,400 per-year, according to the Massachusetts Police Department.

The system seems to be particularly effective in instances of domestic abuse. In Pitt County, North Carolina, those accused of beating their wives (or husbands) are fitted with a GPS bracelet that sounds an alarm in the police station if the batterer comes within a certain distance of the victims home. The system has proven fairly effective so far, with the recidivism rate for domestic violence cases dropping to 14 percent in the years following the institution of program. However, once the GPS was removed, that rate shot back up to 40 percent.

GPS isn't a cure all for the safety of victims and our overcrowded prison system, but it is sure to be an important tool in the crime fighting arsenal of any 21st century police department. [Source: Reuters]

How to 'Geotag' Your Photos

by Will Safer, posted May 19th 2008 at 10:39AM

Taking pictures with digital still cameras has been popular for years. Now GPS devices are the johnny-come-lately of the tech you cool kids want. So what happens when you combine the two capabilities? Why, geotagging your photos, of course!

Geotagging is the process of marking on each digital photograph the geographical location of where you took the shot. This information can be used to enhance how you review pictures from a vacation, maybe viewing them on a map online or comparing them to pictures taken by other people who have similarly geotagged their shots. It can be both fun and informative.

One easy way to geotag your photos is to use a new SD memory card introduced by Eye-Fi (read our post on this announcement here). This SD card automatically detects where you are and writes this information into the image file as you take a picture. Ingenious, we say!

We also liked learning how Flickr, the online photo-sharing site, lets you drag and drop your photos onto an online map to identify where they were taken. (We'll admit we could spend hours doing this.)

And these were just two of the easy methods. Read the whole article for more. [Source Wired]

Cell Carriers Can Volunteer Your Location, Warrant-Free

by Tim Stevens, posted May 6th 2008 at 8:04AM

Cell Carriers Volunteer Your Location, Warrant-Free

These days, every cell phone sold through a U.S. carrier contains within it a locator that enables emergency services to find you should you dial 911. Even if you have an older phone that lacks this feature, your cell phone carrier can still determine your location relatively accurately based on which cell towers your handset is hitting. During an emergency, that knowledge is comforting, but what if you just want to get away for awhile? That's the question on many minds as it's been revealed that providers are sharing that location info with police sans warrant.

It seems that so long as police indicate there is some sort of "exigent circumstance," in other words the risk of physical harm, then cell providers will give up the location of any of their customers to the police without a warning. All they need is some sort of written statement of those exigent circumstances and that's it, whether they be a mother who can't find her kid or a husband whose wife never returned home from work. The situation is different if that customer is involved in a criminal investigation, however. In that case, the police do indeed need a warrant, even if those circumstances still apply.

So, what do you think? Should the police be able to determine your location without any sort of legal proceedings, possibly saving your life if you were ever stranded on the side of the road? Or, should they need a warrant, leaving you on your own to find your way home? [Source: seattlepi, via fark]

Suzuki Offers Up Garmin GPS On All 2009 SX4 Vehicles

by Joshua Fruhlinger, posted Apr 27th 2008 at 6:14PM

http://www.autoblog.com/2008/04/26/2009-suzuki-sx4-getting-nav-system-as-standard-equipment/

Back in the day, integrated GPS units were the stuff of luxury cars, gargantuan SUV cruisers, and lost old ladies. Suzuki is looking to change all of that by including the Garmin T.R.I.P. on all 2009 SX4 Sport and SX4 Crossover vehicles -- at no extra charge. As Suzuki gleefully points out, this marks the first time a sub-$16,000 car has included a GPS unit as standard equipment. The T.R.I.P. (Travel, Real-time traffic, Information and Play) sports a flip-up 4.3-inch screen and Bluetooth connectivity. As for software, it will include real-time traffic, weather forecasts, local event listings, community-based recommendations, and a gas station finder that can filter based on fuel prices. We're still fans of portable GPS units, but there is something elegant about those big-screened integrated monsters.

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Apple Confirms Turn-By-Turn GPS Coming to iPhone

Stereo Company Installs GPS, Causes $13K in Damage

Citysense Uses GPS to Show Live Crowd Movement

Are GPS Devices Making Us Stupid, Too?

Garmin DC 30 GPS Dog Collar Turns Hunting Into a Videogame

Getting Dirty With Mio's 'Knight Rider' GPS

Northern Lights May Increasingly Interfere With GPS

New Traffic Monitoring System to Combat Congestion along I-95

Best Gear for Road Trips (Video)

GPS Golf Balls Tell You Exactly Where They've Gone

Japanese Super-Thief Uses GPS to Steal Rental Cars

GPS Increasingly Found In Law Enforcement's Tool Box

How to 'Geotag' Your Photos

Cell Carriers Can Volunteer Your Location, Warrant-Free

Suzuki Offers Up Garmin GPS On All 2009 SX4 Vehicles

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