GPS Technology Reviews for news, guides and reviews of GPS hardware, software and services including Handheld GPS, Outdoor GPS, GPS PDA, GPS Phones and Auto GPS Navigators

In their sales pitch for the Freedom Mini GPS receiver, Freedom Input point out that there will be some 150 million SmartPhones and PDAs sold in 2007 with only 10-15% having GPS built-in. With a largest dimension of 1.5 inches the new Freedom Mini GPS can easily be carried on ones person (supplied with a keylink) to GPS enable a SmartPhone, PDA or laptop through a Bluetooth wireless link.

The Freedom Mini GPS receiver is powered by the ever accurate SiRF StarIII GPS chipset. The Bluetooth range of 10m is certainly adequate as is the battery working time of 10 hours.

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Garmin has announced the launch of the Garmin Developer Website dedicated to providing software tools and information for website developers who wand to make their website, application and data content compatible with Garmin navigation devices and systems. The website provides both free and licensed Garmin resources and a library of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), toolkits and web services offering six core products: Garmin Communicator Plugin, MotionBasedâ„¢ Web Services, Content Toolkit, Garmin PeerPointâ„¢ Messaging System, Garmin LBS Toolkitâ„¢ and Fleet Management Interface.

Garmin has also announced the MotionBased Web Services API providing developers access to the same GPS content that MotionBased.com customers enjoy. It will enable third-party websites to store, manipulate and display Garmin GPS data with minimal or no development. The API will be available for testing in the summer of 2007 and will compliment the Communicator Plugin API.

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Copiks Software Ltd are offering their PhotoMapper software for free download under GPL open source. The software allows you to tag your photographs (geotagging) with geographical position information using GPS data or entering the coordinates manually. The software adds the geographic position to the photograph files EXIF data. Positions can be exported and viewed in Google Earth.

Global digital map provider, Tele Atlas, has announced the availability of Tele Atlas Historical Traffic Speeds which bundled with the already-available Tele Atlas®/Traffic product will provide a more complete set of traffic information solutions for navigation and location based service products. The complete Tele Atlas/Traffic package will now include real-time incident, flow and predictive traffic data and historical traffic speed information. This enhanced data set will allow Tele Atlas partners to further optimize the routing capabilities for an array of enterprise and consumer navigation devices and products.

Tele Atlas Historical Traffic Speeds are a compilation of billions of real time speed measurements for roads throughout the United States. Average speeds are now available for nearly 500,000 miles of roadway across the U.S. for every hour of the day on each specific day of the week. Tele Atlas Historical Traffic Speeds contains two years of real-time GPS probe data from commercial fleet, delivery and taxi vehicles across the continental U.S., combined with DOT sensors and highway toll tags to determine the average roadway speeds based on historical traffic information.

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Mio Technology Limited is a Belgian company with operations around the world. It holds the number thee position for mobile GPS services across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Mio leveraged off their PDA experience to launch the world’s first GPS integrated PDA back in 2003.

Mio’s new C520 follows what seems a steadily going trend or a widescreen display measuring some 4.3 inches in this case. The wow factor with widescreen seems to be that you can have the navigation map display up at the same as option selections to the side, something like Windows Vista with its widgets down the side.

The Mio C520 has a wide ranging set of Tele Atlas maps from 22 countries and is certainly multi-lingual with the ability to provide navigation instructions in 16 languages. There is a data base of Points of Interest including petrol stations, hospitals, ATM and restaurants to name a few.
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Already a successful GPS retailer in Japan, Panasonic has released its Strada CN-NVD905U in-dash Car GPS navigation system onto the U.S. market. The Panasonic NVD905U is an in-dashboard (double-din) car GPS navigation device and a well equiped entertainment unit as well. Outstanding features are the exceptionally wide 7 inch display and a large 30GB hard disk drive (HDD). For security there is a 4 digit pin-code.

Maps of the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico including detailed maps of 86 U.S. cities are pre-loaded on the HDD for immediate use. There is a huge database of 12 million searchable Points of Interest, such as gas stations, airports, hotels, restaurants, hospitals, ATMs and historic landmarks. The NVD905U can provide navigation instructions in English, Spanish or French.

As an entertainment unit, the Strada CN-NVD905U can play DVD-R/RW, audio CD (MP3 or WMA formats) with surround sound from an integrated SRS Circle Surround Automotive technology. For impressive sound, the amplifier is a high power MOS-FET and their is a 2-channel downmix Dolby Digital decoder. Important to many, the unit has iPod Video connectivity. Music can be loaded uning an SD card.

Available options for the Strada include:

• Satellite radio broadcasts with the purchase of an optional tuner, antenna and subscription.
• Real time traffic reports after installasion of an optional tuner, antenna and purchase of a subscription to a traffic service.
• Bluetooth capability for receiving and making hands-free cell phone calls.
• A rear view camera which can switch on when reverse gear is engaged.

Panasonic Strada CN-NVD905U Features

• 2.5″ 30GB Hard Disk Drive
• 7″ (diagonal) Wide-Screen LCD with Touch Panel Operation
• MOS-FET High-power Amp (50W x 4 Max.)
• SD Memory Card for Map Data Upgrade
• Dolby Digital Decoder (2-channel Downmix)
• DVD Video and WMA/MP3 (CD-R/RW) Playback
• DVD-R/RW Playback
• Full Coverage of the U.S., Puerto Rico and Canada
• Detailed City Maps
• Voice Guidance and Graphical User Interface Menu in English, French and Spanish
• DVD Menu Direct Input
• SRS Circle Surround Automotive
• SQ7 (7-Band Sound Quality)
• Satellite Radio-Ready
• Expansion Module-Ready
• iPod-Ready
• Hands-free Phone System-Ready
• Rear-view Camera-Ready
• 4-digit ID Code Security

The Whistler WGPX-550 is a well featured car GPS navigation unit. It comes preloaded with NAVTEQ maps for instant use, provides visual and audio directional instructions and has multimedia capabilities with a picture viewer and MP3 player. You will find a full specification at the end of this review.

GPS Receiver

The integrated GPS receiver isn’t specified and its performance don’t match any of the figures from our recent GPS receiver chip performance survey. The TTF (time to first fix) figures show the unit is quick to acquire its position. The position accuracy at less than 10 meters is not in the high performance end of receivers compared with units such as those powered with the SiRF Star III chipset. The accuracy implies the unit is not WAAS enabled. Some may find the flip up GPS antenna annoying.

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Late last year the BBC started trialling a new form of citizen journalism equipping university students with Nokia N-series phones , such as the N95, which have an integrated GPS receiver and camera and can also shoot video. The experiment is intended to discover how text, images, images and sound can be combined with location (GPS) and time to produce a real time social news reporting experience. It was only recently that we saw the power of mobile phone citizen journalism capturing the chilling echoes of gunfire on the Virginia Tech campus.

As well as being a novel in other ways, the news format does involve the integration of GPS-tagging into news reporting. It’s something that is sure to become more pervasive with time. Market research leader Gartner Inc. has predicted that about 589 million mobile phones will be sold with cameras in 2007, increasing to more than 1 billion worldwide by 2010. The figures are believable when one considers that camera phones weren’t launched in the US until 2002.

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A timestamp for your photos is not enough when you can geotag it and have both the time and the location of each of your photos. The di-GPS mini is a DSLR attachment that will give you this flexibility. GPS positioning is powered by a SiRF WAAS enabled chipset. Getting a fix is a speedy process with the SiRF onboard and the quoted accuracy of down to 5m is certainly suitable for the application. With dimensions of 50 x 32 x 13mm the manufacturers tag of “mini” is appropriate.

It should be noted that the di-GPS is compatible with only Nikon’s D2HS, D2X, D2XS and D200 and the Fujifilm S5 Pro.

For those who might want to upload their geotagged photos to a website, di-GPS provide the di-GPS-2map software utility that generates and exports a set of files.

Engadget recently held its 2006 Engadget Awards. The winner for the GPS Device on the Year Award for both the Readers Choice and Editors Choice went to TomTom’s GP910. The TomTom GP910 is the premium model in TomTom’s automotive navigation range