Considering Android is getting on in age, it’s surprising it hasn’t been featured on more “miscellaneous” devices. Phones and tablets, sure, but we haven’t seen many, say, DVD players or PMPs using the OS. And certainly not GPS devices, whose proprietary libraries and interfaces were developed at great cost, leading the companies that made them working desperately to squeeze every last penny out of them. But perhaps we’re about to see that change.

GPS maker Holux and sporting map app company SatSki have put out the All Sports GPS, a handset-like unit that has multiple sports-related mapping tools, lots of live maps (Google of course, OVI, OpenStreetMap, and more), and a location and distance-focused interface. Average speed, altitude changes, all that stuff.

It also has Facebook and Twitter baked right in, so you can tell all your friends your coordinates. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to have access to other Google services like GMail or the market, though there is a sub-market called the All Sports App Market that probably will have a few random useful apps.

Sure, it’s not a breakthrough device, but it’s rugged, hackable, and full of location-y goodness. I doubt this is the last one of these devices we’ll be seeing. Garmin and the rest can only fight for so long before they too are assimilated.

No availability or pricing is available right now — nor specs or anything really, let’s hope this thing exists.

[via Gizmag]

Pioneer yesterday announced the so-called Potternavi [JP], a GPS for bicycles that will be available in white or black. Buyers can expect a 2.4-inch color LCD with 240×320 resolution, ANT+ support, an acceleration sensor, a USB port, and 10 hours of battery life.

Pioneer says that the Potternavi not only shows maps and directions but also lets users look for popular spots, for example the nearest restaurant or store. It also gives tips for healthy biking, indicates which actions burn how many calories etc.

What’s interesting is that it supports 3G provided by Japan’s biggest mobile carrier NTT Docomo (the first 2 years are free of charge).

Pioneer plans to start selling the Potternavi in Japan in February next year (price: US$527). The Nikkei is reporting that the 100g device will hit the US and European markets sometime “next summer”, too.

Via AV Watch [JP]

It’s interesting to chart the size and shape of fitness watches over the years. The first Garmins looked like protein bars melted to your wrist by this new one, the Forerunner 910XT, looks as svelte and lithe as the marathoners who will probably wear it. The 910XT costs about $400 and will be available next week.

The new model supports Garmin’s Connect online service as well as their clever Virtual Racer feature that pits you against a ghost runner. It’s good for swimming, biking (with the appropriate add-ons), and running. Optional bike mounts allow you to slap it to your handlebars and then take it off when it’s time to swim.

The 910X adds vibration alerts for hands and ear-free operation. Sadly it looks like you’ve got limited battery life on this thing – about 20 hours – so you’ll need to charge it on long trips.

Product Page

I just had the unique pleasure geocaching for the first time. I’d always been interested in the concept: someone hides something tiny in the wilderness and you use a GPS tracker to find it. However, the thought of traipsing around in the woods to look for someone hippie’s Tupperware did not compute. Then we got the GeoMate Jr., a small GPS tracker designed for kids and discovered that it wasn’t all dream-catchers hidden in stately old oak trees.

The GeoMate Jr. is a dead simple geocaching system for kids. It has 250,000 caches pre-programmed into its interface and you scroll through them using the large button on the left. Then, when you find a cache, you mark it using the button on the right. You can set the tracker to also take you home by pressing both buttons simultaneously. It’s literally so simple a five year old could use it (and reader: mine did).

Hunting consists of selecting a cache and following the onscreen arrows and distance calculations. As you move closer to a cache the distance reading falls and once you’re there you’re unfortunately on your own. Sadly, all of the hints and descriptions available on sites like geocaching.com are unavailable on this device. The caches come up in order of distance from your current location so if you don’t mark previously found caches you may end up being led to the same one over and over again.

You can also type in geocache code manually using the buttons, but it’s a bit of a chore. The device costs $69.95 and $24.95 for an update kit to program new geocaches onto the device.

We were initially frustrated while looking for caches near us until we began to understand the size of these things. In the city, most people hide tiny little microcaches, no bigger than a pebble. Without the hints it’s considerably tougher to find them but once you know what you’re looking for it’s fairly simple.

Luckily, when we went out into the wilds of Brooklyn with the GeoMate Jr., we stumbled upon a cache held by a helpful fellow who goes by the name of schbus86 (he drive’s a school bus). His cache, CRETE, contained a trackable coin that we will later drop off elsewhere. It’s this mixture of adventure, a search for pirate booty, and electronics that makes geocaching so compelling.

The GeoMate Jr. runs on two AA batteries and the interface could be a bit complex for smaller kids. However, paired with a responsible adult and access to a geocache database online, it’s an excellent and fun way to get kids excited about exploring the outdoors.

Product Page

German-based Navigon pulled out of the North American PND market in 2009 and has since focused on the European region and smartphone apps. It’s likely that these two areas of investment were key to Garmin’s interest. We reviewed Navigon’s last US-centric GPS units in 2009 and while they were competent, failed to eclipse Garmin’s or TomTom’s models in anyway.

Navigon is also a major player in the automotive OEM field, which might lead to big things for Garmin and consumers. Right now most baked-in GPS solutions aren’t exactly impressive and could a dash of Garmin charm would go a long way.

Going forward, Navigon will operate as a subsidiary of Garmin Ltd pending the acquisition’s approval and closing.

Why this is making a splash today, I can’t really answer, but here we go. Nasa published a white paper [PDF] in November that discusses how best to protect our GPS satellites from any sort of impropriety. The primary suggestion is to have the president declare our GPS satellites critical infrastructure. Once they’ve been classified as such the Department of Homeland Security will be put in charge of making sure they’re fully operational.

Once that’s taken care of you can move onto the smaller steps: establish a program to more quickly report (and subsequently repair) any malfunctioning satellite; criminalize the jamming of GPS signals; tell commercial manufacturers to ensure that their GPS devices don’t clonk out because, say, it’s cloudy outside or there’s a light breeze; and and to fun a GPS back-up service. If, for whatever James Bond reason, the satellites stop working and GPS ceases to function it’d be helpful to have a Plan B so that airplanes don’t fall out of the sky and whatnot.

(There used to be a system that could accomplish much the same tasks as GPS called LORAN, based on radio, but that’s been phased out in the U.S.)

It turns out that The Economist recently reported on a DARPA project that would create a free smartphone app that people could use that would detect GPD jammers. Once detected, the app would inform the authorities that something was afoot, much like that “good citizen” app that made headlines several months ago.

It’s illegal to own or operate a GPS jammer in the United States for many valid reasons. More importantly, it threatens many systems us humans find relevant. If GPS goes down, how will people get around cities without getting lost? (Google Maps works so well for public transit.) It’s not surprising that the biggest threat to GPS is actually its owners: the US government.

GPS frequencies are very weak, so any slight amount of interference can cause the signals to fail. LightSquared, a company that plans to deliver wireless broadband over satellite, operates in frequency ranges adjacent to those used by GPS. Many people involved with GPS were surprised when the FCC gave tentative approval to LightSquared, essentially setting up GPS for failure. Apparently, the normal processes were circumvented for possible political favors.

Garmin recently tested GPS near the LightSquared transmitters and found jamming at 3.57 to 13.76 miles with a loss of location fixing from 0.66 to 5.6 miles away. Even the US Air Force thinks the FCC has gone crazy. Hopefully, this doesn’t interfere with my hooking up on Ditto.

The company touts its “mobile resource management” software and services as environmentally beneficial, and fuel-saving. According to the Telogis website, its mapping and fleet-management systems help companies: cut [drivers'] idling by more than 25 percent, reduce miles driven out-of-route by 30 percent, and can reduce speeding for better fuel economy.

Telogis systems also “provide baseline data, ongoing collection and record-keeping on [a fleet's] greenhouse gas output,” to help companies stay compliant with rapidly evolving, environmental and transportation legislation.

The Department of Energy via Fueleconomy.gov reports that:

“Aggressive driving (speeding, rapid acceleration and braking) wastes gas. It can lower gas mileage by 33 percent at highway speeds and by 5 percent around town…While each vehicle reaches its optimal fuel economy at a different speed (or range of speeds), gas mileage usually decreases rapidly at speeds above 60 mph… Each 5 mph driven over 60 mph is like paying an additional $0.24 per gallon for gas.”

Founded in 2001, the company previously raised a $3.5 million round in 2009, and a $2 million round in 2010. The filings did not disclose which funds were involved in these deals.

According to Crunchbase (TechCrunch’s open directory of technology companies, innovators and products) BNP Paribas backed the company.

Feb. 12, 2011 Update: A spokesperson from Telogis called TechCrunch to let us know that a Crunchbase user provided inaccurate data on their business. (Corrections have been added to Crunchbase as well.) BNPParibas was not involved in funding this company.

Company representatives said Telogis’ funding rounds, including this latest for $2.9 million, have all been led by angel investors who did not wish to be named at this time. Each round corresponds to an acquisition by Telogis.

The company has a sales footprint spanning 60 countries, and at the end of 2009 had attained annual revenue of $17.1 million, according to the Inc. 5000 index of America’s fastest-growing, privately owned companies.

On Tuesday this week, Telogis announced that it acquired Intergis, another location-based tech company that specialized in “routing, mobile resource and fleet management software and services for small to mid-sized businesses,” according to a press statement.

Existing GPS systems usually achieve an accuracy of about 10m, but that will change soon, according to a recent report in Japanese business daily The Nikkei: a new technology developed by Mitsubishi and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) improves that number to an unbelievable 3cm.

This record for a non-military system was achieved during a recent public test in Japan, with a car driving at 20km/h. The car (see picture above) was equipped with a conventional GPS system, but signals from Michibiki were complementing the GPS readings (Michibiki is one of JAXA’s satellites currently orbiting Earth).

JAXA and Mitsubishi claim former tests have shown their system maintains its accuracy with cars even driving up to 80km/h. The makers also say that because Michibiki can cover Japan for just eight hours a day, two more satellites are needed to provide high-quality GPS for 24 hours straight.

Not too surprisingly, JAXA and Mitsubishi see the new tech used for future car navigation systems but also for advanced construction machines, child monitoring systems or travel guidance solutions.

Oh, those Russians. Sistema, a mobile operator over in Putin Country, just released the first GLONASS/GPS phone in the country. GLONASS is Russia’s GPS solution that doesn’t depend on America’s capitalist satellites.

The phone will be “just like the iPhone 4″ and cost about $240 when it comes out in March.

via Quintura

Now here’s a prickly issue: should the government have to obtain a warrant in order to slap a GPS tracking device on your car as you drive around town doing whatever? A federal appeals court says yes, in fact, the government does have to obtain a warrant, if for no other reason than a “reasonable person does not expect anyone to monitor and retain a record of every time he drives his car, including his origin, route, destination and each place he stops and how long he stays there.”

This all stems from a Washington, DC case in which a three-judge panel reversed a man’s life sentence. In the case that led to his sentence, the government had used evidence gathered from a GPS tracking device planted on the man’s car. Without that data, the case wouldn’t have amounted to much.

But let’s not dwell too much on the specifics of this case, and instead think of the larger issue. Let’s say you park your car in your driveway, and the police come by, attach a GPS device (without telling you, of course), then gather evidence of your wrongdoing. They then use this evidence to convict you of wrongdoing.

The appeals court decided that no, that would violate your “reasonable expectation of privacy.”

You could, of course, choose to live a crime-free life, but I suppose that’s not what’s being discussed here.

There’s Bluetooth calling from a connected cell phone, voice commands, and lifetime traffic & map updates as well. These two new models offer pretty much everything in TomTom’s arsenal besides the always-connected LIVE services. Prices? $299 for the 4.3-inch and $319 for the 5-inch and they should be available from TomTom, Amazon and Best Buy shortly.

TomTom Introduces Next Generation Navigation Devices

New GO Series Offers Faster Routing, Enhanced Software and New Look and Feel

CONCORD, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–TomTom, the world’s leading provider of location and navigation solutions, announced today the launch of its newest generation of navigation devices in the United States. The new TomTom GO 2405 TM and GO 2505 TM devices will offer consumers a powerful navigation experience with faster routing, an enhanced software platform, and a new look and feel.

“At TomTom, we are continuously working to deliver innovative navigation solutions for our consumers”
“At TomTom, we are continuously working to deliver innovative navigation solutions for our consumers,” said Tom Murray, senior vice president of market development, TomTom. “The GO Series combines new software architecture and enhanced routing to provide our consumers with superior driving intelligence.”

Smarter, Faster Routing

TomTom is committed to providing drivers with a world-class navigation experience and now has created a patented, high-speed algorithm that allows for instant route planning. The GO 2405 TM and GO 2505 TM utilize this innovative technology to conduct continuous routing. By regularly monitoring traffic information, these models will recommend the best current route to drivers.

Intuitive User Experience

The GO 2405 TM and GO 2505 TM are the first TomTom products to include a new, enhanced user interface. With more-intuitive software, users will be routed to any destination within a few taps. Additionally, drivers will experience seamless routing with voice recognition navigation commands.

Complete New Look and Feel

The new devices also feature capacitive touch screen technology and a brighter display. Drivers will be able to navigate through menu screens with just a swipe of the finger and can pinch and zoom for easy map viewing. Furthermore, the device will be secured with a new click and lock magnetic mount that can easily be docked and un-docked with one hand.

Features Overview

The devices offer exciting new features that enhance drivers’ user experience, including:

Instant and continuous routing
Crisp, sharp graphics and intuitive user menus
Pinch-to-zoom and swipe from screen-to-screen using gestures
Bluetooth® hands free calling* to maximize safety
Voice recognition to operate the device with verbal commands
A click & lock mount to keep the device securely mounted while driving
Expanded driving view on 4.3” (GO 2405 TM) or 5” (GO 2505 TM) glass touch screens
In addition to the new features, drivers will continue to benefit from TomTom’s most popular offerings, which include:

Lifetime Traffic & Map Updates**
Announces Street Names
Advanced Lane Guidance
Availability and Pricing

The TomTom GO Series is initially available at Amazon.com, BestBuy.com and TomTom.com in the United States. The devices will be available at retail stores in mid-2011. Prices begin at $299.

Why is this important? Well, presumably a Southern invasion would require some sort of GPS signal for logistical coordination. However, I seriously doubt the satellite signals available to both military and civilian devices aren’t being bolstered by some secret system that we don’t know about. I mean I love my Forerunner and all, but I wouldn’t go into battle with it.

via GPSTrackLog

http://contour.com/videoPlayer/ContourMapVideoPlayer.swf?customPlaylistURL=http://contour.com/alaska.xml&autostart=false

Note: Due to the size limitations of our website, the above video is pretty squished. Check out Contour’s site to see it in it’s full size glory.

Afraid that the almighty government will sneak into your driveway, attach a GPS device to your car, then track your every move? Perhaps you should be more afraid of what your child’s school has in mind? A Chicago-area elementary school will keep track of students’ bus rides using GPS. This a move to ease parents’ concerns about the perils of bus rides! Children have been riding in school buses to school for how many years, and only now there’s an issue? What a world.

The technology in question here is called Z Pass, and it was developed by a Seattle company called Zonar Systems. It’s nothing more than a “luggage tag-sized” GPS tag that’s clipped onto the students’ backpacks. Once activated, the unit then tracks the students’ bus ride to and from school.

One parent actually said “a little piece of mind goes a long way.” It wasn’t so long ago that pioneer families in the West were fighting bears to survive, but now we define “peace of mind” as being able to track the whereabouts of a school bus as it makes its 20-minute trip around the neighborhood.

But, hey, if it makes some parents happy, so be it. I mean, I don’t know what kind of privacy case you could make out of this. What, school kids should be able to go to school without having their exact location broadcast to their parents?

The government is coming after you! Run for the hills! Oh, wait, the government owns the hills! Shrill, yes, but there’s a point. A recent article in Time magazine paints a fairly scary picture of the potential for the government to use GPS (originally a military creation, remember) to track your every move. Will this happen? Eh, pretty hard to see that happening — but it could happen. Maybe.

What’s going on is that a recent court decision, in California, “recently decided the government can monitor you in this way virtually anytime it wants—with no need for a search warrant.”

Apparently the “reasonable expectation of privacy” doesn’t apply to your driveway anymore (when it always had in the past), so the G Men could, if they wanted, plant a GPS tracking device on your car, and watch as you drive to and fro’. “Looks like Smith is visiting Taco Bell again, let’s grab him.”

Does anyone honestly expect that to happen? I respect the surrounding discussion, but I cannot believe that the generally incompetent government is going to go around and bug regular people’s cars.

There’s 300 million Americans, and you’re the one that’s on their radar.

I just find it a little bit far fetched, I guess.

But hey, nothing wrong with a good ol’ fashioned debate on your rights and privacy in general.

Above you see London; there are dozens more in the set. Check it out.

[via Metafilter]

The size of the app is a bit misleading: you actually need a good bit more than that unused on your phone in order for the app to even install. I’ve got an 8GB iPhone 3G, and it took me awhile to trim down my playlists and delete lesser-used apps before I could get the TomTom app to load successfully. Then I had to do it all over again when an update was released. You cannot install or update this app over the air: the file size requires you to install it from your computer.

With a footprint well over a gigabyte, it should be no surprise that the app is slow to load. It takes almost 30 seconds for the app to load into memory and be ready for user input. The application is not particularly snappy, which can be a nuisance if you’re trying to update a route while on the go.

I found the routing to be just fine, and have no complaints about the quality of the maps or the included points of interest. I found the Ukrainian Museum-Archive while tooling around in Cleveland, Ohio. If such a niche is in the POI list, I’m confident that many other interesting places are also included. And to make things even better, the TomTom app also ties into local Google listings, allowing you to hit Google from within the TomTom app itself (obviously a data connection is required for this aspect fo the app).

I particularly liked the automatic “night mode”: when the calculated local sunset occurs the color scheme automatically switches to a darker palette, making the app easier to see in the lower light without blinding your night vision. When the calculated local sunrise occurs, it switches back to the daytime color palette. Both palettes are user-configurable, allowing you to find a scheme that you find comfortable.

A minor nicety of the app is smooth music fading, so that currently playing songs are not awkwardly paused. Instead the music fades nicely, the TomTom voice directions are made over top of the softer music, and then the music is returned to its previous volume.

As you can see from the screenshot above, the TomTom app squeezes a lot of information into a small screen. Along the bottom you can see your current speed, the current road’s speed limit, distance to the next turn, estimated time remaining on your trip, and the current local time. Along the side you see the optional traffic report.

One of the more interesting features of the TomTom app is a TomTom Traffic subscription, which you can purchase from within the app itself. It costs $20 for a one-year subscription, and the traffic updates are integrated extremely well into the app itself. I asked TomTom how it worked, and this was the response:

We start with our own TomTom IQ Routes Technology, which uses anonymous historical speed profile data to give our customers the most efficient route for any time of day or day of week.

We then layer in real-time GPS information from our LIVE, wirelessly connected portable navigation devices, and combine this data with third-party information from a number of sources. These include GPS sensors from fleet operators, Department of Transportation (DoT) traffic cameras, DoT speed sensors, airborne/mobile spotter vehicles, digital scanners that cover many local emergency services, police callouts, and traffic “Tip Lines.”

Our users opt in to provide anonymous speed profile data via our portable navigation devices. This aggregate data is delivered when the user connects the device to a computer that has our free desktop software, TomTom HOME.

Additionally, our wirelessly connected devices (like the GO 740 LIVE) themselves provide anonymous information about real-time traffic information for the benefit of other TomTom users.

In my testing, the traffic details were extremely accurate. It reliably reported rush hour slow downs, holiday congestion, and a couple of accidents on a regular basis. Unfortunately for me, the fastest route was still usually the one through the thick of the congestion, regardless of cause.

Is it worth $20 a year extra for the traffic subscription? That’s a tough question for me to answer. If I were buying this app solely for myself, I’d probably opt not to get it. My guess is that it would simply be too infrequent that the app would be able to effectively route me around a slow down, but that’s just my opinion. If you live on the road and time matters, you might feel differently.

Complaints
I have a couple major complaints about the TomTom app. First, as previously stated, it’s a huge application that is slow to load and a bit sluggish to respond. It’s a total battery hog, so if you’re using this app in the car be sure to bring along a charging cable of some sort to keep your phone alive.

A subtle related issue is processing speed. If you miss your turn, the app re-calculates and suggests the next best turn for you. Unfortunately, it often told me to turn onto the street I was already passing. At 35 miles per hour in a city, you’re often driving faster than the iPhone 3G can calculate. Maybe an iPhone 4 will be better.

Second, the GPS reception on my phone was pretty weak. If I placed the phone on my lap or between the seats next to me, I would consistently lose GPS reception. I’d have to hold the phone up or place it on the dashboard in order to maintain a decent connection to the satellites. When GPS reception is lost, the screen turns monochrome and a status message appears at the top of the display. While driving to and from Lexington, KY, I’d lose signal about once every five minutes.

Third, the TomTom app announces driving directions in a manner that I wasn’t quite expecting. It’ll say “In 300 yards, turn left onto Suchandsuch Street”. Then, after 300 yards, it’ll say “Turn left”. It will not repeat the name of the street onto which I am to turn. This took a little getting used to, and caused me to miss my turn on more than one occasion. My wife considered this a fatal flaw and completely panned my use of the app as a result. Once you know what to expect, it’s not that big a deal; but it would be nicer if the street name would be repeated, for safety sake.

Conclusion
For $50 you get a lot of app. For an extra $20 you get a lot more in the way of a traffic subscription. If you need turn-by-turn directions on your phone and simply can’t (or won’t) buy a dedicated GPS device, the TomTom app is a good choice.

The Timex Ironman Global Trainer costs $275 and includes a SiRF Star III GPS receiver and supports up to 100 GPS waypoints. For $50 you can get a heartrate monitor. The watch is 50m water resistant and pretty beefy.

Product Page
via NaviGadget

This device is a portable GPS unit with a built-in keyboard. It supports SPOT satellite messaging technology – apparently unrelated to Microsoft’s MSN Direct technology – that can be used to call for help in an emergency. However, using the technology you can send messages from almost anywhere in the world.

The unit is currently in pre-release and will include topographic and street coverage of the U.S. and Canada, thereby limiting its usefulness in Tibet considerably.

The Earthmate PN-60w is the world’s first handheld GPS that enables Type & Send text messaging via satellite. A special interface on the PN-60w connects it wirelessly with the SPOT Satellite Communicator, which was designed exclusively for DeLorme. Messages are created on the PN-60w’s internal keyboard, then relayed via satellite for delivery using established SPOT technology.

Because messages are conveyed via satellite, and are not dependent on cellular phone coverage, the PN-60w with SPOT Satellite Communicator keeps users reliably connected even in remote locations around the world. Both devices are designed to be ruggedized and waterproof and thus better suited than most cell phones for the rigors of outdoor use.