TomTom Navigator vs Google Maps

I’ve been using TomTom’s products for many years, paying out a huge amount over the years on a regular basis for new maps and new software, across various generations of PDA.  I’ve always used it on a PDA or smartphone rather than on a dedicated device, because I just don’t see the benefit in having yet another device in the car that I need to charge when I’ve already got a workable unit in my pocket.

Over the last few years TomTom’s development of the Navigator version for PDAs has ground to a halt, probably due to their concern over the software being pirated, however they’ve continued to release versions for selected devices usually buried in the ROM of the device in the hope that that would project it. As a result of this - they’ve left me on a pretty stale version, without access to the latest maps.  For reference I’m using an old version of TomTom Navigator on a HP iPaq 910, and GMM on a Google Nexus One.

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TomTom would like my feedback

Updated on 26 May 2010 by Andy Bryant

How many emails do we all get these days with requests to fill out ‘just a short survey’.  I don’t know about you, but I get dozens each week.  Sometimes I just delete, but occassionally I respond - because I want to let a company know that it needs to do better; or to tell them that their staff have been exceptionally good.

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Packing light? My India kit list

Packing light is the best way to go, whether travelling on business or leisure.  At the very least it makes it easier to transport from the car to the hotel or tent; and if you’re really good, it can let you go for a 2 week holiday using only hand luggage.  

I’ve been working on optimizing my travel packing for some time partially to make my travel more enjoyable, and also to free up space for my SLR and lenses. In the interests of optimizing my travel kit list further, I’ve documented the stuff I took to India recently - and have noted items that I took, but could easily have left at home (so that I can be a bit more focused next time, and perhaps you might give me some suggestions in the comments below). 

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Sharing your tracks and photos on-line

Updated on 30 Nov 2011 by Andy Bryant

Whilst the KMZ file you’ve created of your track-log and photos is great for looking at on your own system, it isn’t great for sending via email - due to the size of the embedded photos.  What you really want to do here is to make use of an online album somewhere to host the photos - and then just include links to the photos from within the kmz file.  This is what I did for the track log from my Tour de Mont Blanc trip.

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Using absolute-altitude vs clamped-to-ground

The problem with my standard method for geotagging photos for a flight in Google Earth is that they’ll be shown at an altitude of 0m, stuck to the ground, rather than in mid-air on your flight-path.  This is pretty easy to fix - because a KML file is an editable text (XML) file, and a KMZ file is just a zip-file containing the KML along with the photos.  You can find out more about KML files from Google or Wikipedia.

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Geotagging photos

Geotagging photos is one of those things you’re going to think is completely geeky until someone shows you a real application for it - then you get the wow factor, and realize it is a great idea.

The concept behind geotagging is to link the GPS coordinates from which you took a photograph to the photo itself, and to store those coordinates as data embedded within the photo.  This is usually done by correlating the time stamp on the photograph with the nearest point recorded in a track-log from a GPS device. Once this correlation is done and the data written to the images; then a suitable application can read the coordinates and display the photo on a map. For example - both flickr and Google picasa will show a clickable map alongside your images.  

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OS Map overlay on Google Earth

Just discovered a cool mashup created by Gavin Brooks.  It grabs OS map data from the OS server, and could be used to overlay it on the Google Earth viewer on your desktop.  Apparently it is all within the terms of the license for OS OpenSpace API, although there is some grey google-ish license stuff that I don't quite understand.

Cool stuff anyway...

Custom Raster Maps on Garmin GPS

Wow!… GPSFix just alerted me to a new feature being beta-tested by Garmin on their latest handheld devices.  You first grab a trail map or aerial photo as a jpeg - then overlay it on Google Earth as an image overlay - so that you can geo-reference it.  Then you save as a kmz file - and drop it on your Garmin Oregon, Dakota or Colorado.  

I’ve known about a hack to convert raster maps into psuedo vector files that can be viewed on a Garmin for some time - but this looks like a much better solution.

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New Garmin Oregon 550 and Dakota GPS

Updated on 26 Jun 2009 by Andy Bryant

Updated on 23 Jul 2009 by Andy Bryant

Updated on 16 Aug 2009 by Andy Bryant

The excellent GPSFix blog alerted me today to some recent device news from Garmin.

First of all - there’s the new high-end Oregon devices, the 550 and 550t with integrated 3.2M camera, 3-axis compass, and an ‘improved’ screen.  See the video below for a quick overview. 

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New Garmin Forerunner 310XT

Updated on 16 Jun 2009 by Andy Bryant

Garmin have just announced the latest addition to their fitness forerunner range - the 310XT. It combines features from the 305 and 405, and packages them into a smaller package than before, adding things like water-proof capability, vibration alerts and wireless sync to the Garmin Connect website.

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