gps posts

ALK Technologies today is releasing a new version of the CoPilot Live app with a feature called ActiveTraffic. It uses real time traffic flow information that mates with dynamic routing technology to get you to your destination by selecting alternate routes, then accurately estimating your new arrival time.

The traffic information comes from INRIX, which is a leading provider of traffic data. I tried the new app, and it certainly showed some traffic snarls. But here in southern Arizona, things don't get too dicey even at rush hour, so there wasn't any need to select a new route. I could see very detailed information in Phoenix, where traffic can be downright hellish.

The ActiveTraffic feature is US$9.99 for a 12 month subscription. Current owners of CoPilot Live v8 US Traffic subscribers will get upgraded to TrafficLive for free.

TeleNav is the developer of a lot of mobile navigation applications, including AT&T Navigator for the iPhone. Now the company has come out with an iPhone version of a popular app that originally launched for the BlackBerry platform -- OnMyWay.

OnMyWay has a simple goal -- it tells another person or group of people that you are currently "on your way" and sends them the estimated time of your arrival. The app sends new alerts to your contacts if your ETA changes (if you're stuck in traffic, for instance), so that you can safely continue driving and not have to call or text someone else if you're running late.

To set up a notification, the iPhone owner inputs a destination, an appointment time, and one or more phone numbers or email addresses to send alerts to, then taps the start button. iPhone contacts are integrated into the app to make setting up the notifications a snap.

OnMyWay takes care of the rest of the trip. It starts by sending an initial notification to the recipients telling them that the driver has started his trip, and then includes an estimated time of arrival. Up to three additional status messages might be sent, depending on how the driver has set up the app; if the sender is going to be late, if the person is within a pre-set number of minutes away from the destination, and when the driver is one minute from arriving.

Where I could see this app being a real boon is in letting my wife know when I'll be getting back from an appointment. If I'm running a little late, she usually pings me via text, and I have to pull over and send her a response. With OnMyWay, she'd be getting updates and would hopefully leave me to my driving... Some screenshots are in the gallery below.

If you've ever wished Facebook would integrate some of the functionality of online check-in apps like Gowalla or Foursquare, you're in luck. The Facebook for iPhone app has been updated to version 3.2 and includes a new feature called "Places."

Places is Facebook's stab at sharing locations with friends via GPS tagging; by tapping a "Check in" button and choosing a location near you, you'll be able to share your current location in your friends' news feeds. Your check-in will also show up on the location's Recent Activity page, assuming the location has a Facebook page. So, you can look forward to a lot of "Johnny Appleseed is at Target in University Heights" posts in your Facebook News Feed in the near future. Hooray? You'll also be able to tag any friends who are with you, and you can see other Facebook users at that location by checking the "People Here Now" section.

Places is currently only available in the USA (meaning that I haven't tested it), but Facebook promises to roll the feature out to other countries and mobile platforms "soon."

I like the idea of this feature in theory, but in practice, as soon as this feature rolls out in my country, I'll be scrambling to disable it. I've always thought of apps like Gowalla and Foursquare as the electronic equivalent of hanging a big sign in front of your house saying "I'm away from home, PLEASE ROB ME!" Add Facebook into the mix, a site already notorious for its questionable privacy record, and it's enough to send people like me into paroxysms of paranoia. Facebook spent over half their Places introduction post stressing that any information users share with Places is completely under users' control, but we've all heard that one before.

The free nav app for the iPhone, Waze, has just been updated with a new 2.0 version that sports some new features and some of the same old problems.

Waze is basically a navigation app with some crowdsourced features. If you are using the app, Waze keeps track of your location, and if you get stuck in traffic, it will tell others along or near your route that something is amiss. It's a good idea, but only if there are a lot of people using the app on your route.

New to this version are commuting groups, which allows you to create groups of drivers and see them on the map. There is an improved 3D view, and a better, simpler, search menu. The app works in landscape as well as portrait mode, and does give voice directions.

Even though the "iBike" is nothing more than a patent application, the folks at Unplggd have described how they'd outdo Apple's offering to the world of bike computers. We must admit, the result includes some seriously geeky, tricked-out options.

For example, this DIY USB charger uses a dynamo attached to the rear wheel to keep your devices charged. I say "devices," because this rig produces enough power to keep two devices running.

Additionally, this DIY waterproof iPhone cover is as brilliant as it is simple. Basically, it's at 20oz. soda bottle with the pouring end sawed off. It slips over the mounted iPhone with the open end facing the rider.

They also went on to list the gizmos you'll always want to bring with you while biking, including a GPS device, phone and camera. Fortunately, the iPhone is all three. There's more to the article, of course, and we suggest you read the whole thing. If you do trick out your bike like this, be sure to send us pictures!

That bike patent is about a year old, and big companies like Apple often patent ideas that will never see production. But hey, Nike+ was a surprise, too -- maybe we will be riding around one day on a two-wheeled Apple product.

Until a recent trip up to Canyon de Chelly in Northeast Arizona, I hadn't fully realized just how important Apple products have become to my photo workflow.

As I sat back to think about the number of ways that Apple has made my job behind the camera easier, I began to realize just how dramatically things have changed since I had a Canon film camera, a backpack full of lenses, and lots of Fuji film.

First, let's talk about digital imaging. While Apple doesn't currently make a digital camera, in the old days, they made the Quicktake, which was one of the very first digital cameras on the market. Most of my images pass through Apple hardware and either Apple or third party software. I carry my MacBook Pro on my trips, and I download images from a CF card onto the desktop; I can browse through the images in Aperture or iPhoto.

We love iPhone/iPad vs. unwitting criminal stories, especially ones that end happily. Across this category, though, it's hard to hold a candle to the story of Jordan Sturm, Horatio Toure, and one particular purloined iPhone.

As reported by the Chronicle, Sturm was standing on the street in San Francisco's SOMA neighborhood this past Monday when Toure rode up on a bicycle, grabbed the iPhone out of her hand and sped away. Most of the time, the phone would be gone for good, or (with luck) tracked down by Apple's Find My iPhone service. In this particular case, though, there was an easier way.

The iPhone in question is owned by Covia Labs, and it was being used to test the company's Alert & Respond software for police officers and military personnel. CEO David Kahn had asked Sturm to step outside -- with a phone running A&R's GPS live tracking app -- so he could demonstrate the geographic tool to his PR folk. Moments after she walked out the door, the system came to life... and showed an indicator heading off down the street at high speed. Oops.

Sturm ran back inside, they called police; Toure was arrested ten minutes later and about half a mile away, in possession of the stolen phone. Unlucky for him, but lucky for Covia Labs; they saved the cost of a new iPhone and gained a whole bunch of free publicity.

Note: Several commenters are insinuating that this theft was set up as a stunt to provide exposure for Covia Labs. There is absolutely no evidence to support that theory at this time; the suspect was arrested and details on his arrest were provided by the SFPD, per the original SFGate story. The suspect was booked on felony charges and placed in jail.

[via Techmeme]

Photo by oedipusphinx | flickr: cc

Apple had to do some explaining recently -- after a House of Representatives probe into the company's privacy policy came up, the company sent a twelve-page letter to the members of Congress, going into detail on what all of the legalese in the company's privacy policy actually means. The biggest takeaway is that Apple does collect location data from your iPhone -- every 24 hours, an encrypted batch of locations for cell towers, Wi-Fi access points, and GPS coordinates are hooked up to a zip code and sent back to Apple. This is all true -- we've heard from customers who've noticed the daily batch of information sent out over their iPhone's data plan.

Why does Apple do all of this? The company claims that it's all necessary to account for "the ever-changing physical landscape, more innovative uses of mobile technology, and the increasing number of Apple's customers." Of course, if you don't want to be a part of this system, you can shut all of the location tracking down right inside the phone's preferences -- either phone-wide, or on a per-app basis depending on what version of iOS you are using. Version 3 and below requires a visit to each app, iOS 4 allows you to shut it off at the OS level. Just go to Settings>General>Location Services and turn location data on or off. The problem then, of course, is that you won't have access to those services while you use your phone.

Apple also notes that it collects the same data from Macs who use location-based services (like automatically setting your time zone), and the iAd network also sends location information every time an ad is requested. In short, Apple knows where you are, and in return, you get the benefit of location-specific information. Worth it?

I've spoken of my Trailguru love in the past. It's a simple GPS application that has, unfortunately, seemed to drop off the radar at least as far as software updates are concerned. I know its creator is still on the scene -- because I can track his bike runs on the trailguru.com website -- but the iPhone application languishes. That's a big shame, because I have friends on trailguru.com and I have localized months and months of progress there. The site isn't polished or perfect, but I really do like using it.

Today, however, I discovered something fabulous. I learned that Runmeter -- an otherwise excellent application without a cobranded website -- can export its trails to gpx files and e-mail them off. Why is that so exciting?

Well, it means that I can use the Runmeter app on my iPhone 4 -- running in the background using iOS "multitasking" -- and then later send my results up to the Trailguru site via my desktop system. I e-mail them to myself and then use the Trailguru webpage to load the gpx files.

The iOS 4 update to MobileNavigator North America has been eagerly awaited by fans of the best selling turn-by-turn navigation system, and overall I'd call the update a win.

To test the system, I took a drive from Southern Arizona to Chandler, a suburb of Phoenix. First off, having the multitasking capabilities was wonderful. I could take or make calls without stopping the route guidance, and while I was on the phone, I could get notice of turns. Since my phone was connected to my car via Bluetooth, the voice announcements came through the car speaker.

I set up speed limit warnings, and the system dutifully warned me if I was going too fast, which is easy to do on those long, straight Arizona highways.

The popular Navigon app for the iPhone has had a significant update which is likely to please current owners and may get the company some new sales as well.

New features include Live Weather (which gives the current weather wherever you're going), parking information, iOS 4 integration -- including background navigation and Retina Display enhancements), and updates to the NAVTEQ maps included.

Additionally, there are some nice changes and improvements to the graphics, so this is a fairly substantial update. Read on for a little more insight.

As a longtime fan of the pastime of geocaching, I've been following the evolution of the official Groundspeak Geocaching app (US$9.99) since the painful early days. With the release of Geocaching version 4.0 yesterday, it appears that Groundspeak has raised the bar with a new design and additional features.

If you're not familiar with geocaching, it's a location-based hobby where you seek caches (usually small containers with a logbook and goodies inside) based on hints, latitude and longitude coordinates, and a keen eye. You can also hide caches for others to find. GroundSpeak has a free Geocaching Intro app available if you're interested in learning about the hobby but don't want to make the $10 investment in the full app.

So what's new in Geocaching v.4? A lot. The user interface has been redesigned to make it much more streamlined. I found that actions that formerly took a number of screen taps are now usually no more than one or two taps away. Although I'm not fond of long lists of features, there's no other way to show all of the additions and improvements:

-- Google Maps integration (now have choice of Google Maps, Bing, or OpenStreetMap)
-- Ability to take photos and submit them with geocache logs
-- Ability to submit logs for trackable items such as geocoins and travel bugs
-- A logs tab with displays of pending and sent logs
-- Better reliability downloading pocket queries
-- Online / offline indicator
-- GPS acquisition status and location display
-- Listen to iPod app during caching
-- Support for home location (specified in geocaching.com user profile)
-- Notepad for every geocache listing
-- View any list of caches on map
-- View trackables inventory

Geocaching 4 has not been specifically rewritten for iOS 4 or the iPhone 4, so if you want to see the map graphics in all of their glory on your Retina Display, you're out of luck. A few screenshots of the revised app are included in the gallery below.

Even though the first iPhone lacked a GPS and compass (not to mention a true gyroscope), there were a few early avionic entries to the App Store, mostly involving crude tilt measurements. When the iPhone got a GPS and then a compass, it became a wee more useful to the flying sort. The iPad brings ample screen size to the table, and the iPhone 4 has a gyroscope. But leave it to good ol' American ingenuity (or largess) to put an iPad smack in the middle of a plane's dashboard.

The iCub is a small bush plane with an iPad mounted inside. According to Bill Canino, president of SportairUSA (makers of the iCub), the iPad is more of an accessory than an actual flying instrument. For one thing, it isn't FAA-certified. I doubt any sane pilot would rely on an iPad to actually fly or land a plane. Canino's suggestion, made clear by the selection of apps they will include on the device, is that the iPad is a companion to the plane's occupants. If you land on a beach and are injured, now you'll have the resources available to know how to sew that arm back on. Bush planes don't usually incorporate hi-tech devices, so the iCub hopes to set itself apart with an interesting set of apps that might be useful to the folks who fly these particular planes.

I asked Canino how they were going to load the apps and they were still working on that process but it will allow end users to own the apps, probably by setting them each up with an iTunes account (if they don't already have one) and gifting them the apps. There are still details to be worked out, but if you're in the market for a new bush plane plus iPad, you can go ahead and order an iCub today for the low, low price of $92,900 -- slightly more for the Bush iCub model.

There have been some impressive apps for finding nearby services released lately. AT&T didn't want to get left out, so they are offering Speak4it, a free app that lets your vocal cords do the walking.

Say something like "Chinese restaurant," and the app will mark relevant hits on a map, on a list, or produce an augmented reality view using your iPhone camera, pointing you in the right direction.

Speak4it does things that Siri, Google and others do, but the execution is great and it certainly beats typing. Speak4it also has a unique feature where you can draw a circle on the map and the app will show businesses just within that area. If you draw a line, it will find places along that route.