GPS

We were hoping to hear some news from HTC, and the device manufacturer did indeed have a couple of announcements at GSMA. The first is the HTC 3470. The company is touting it as the affordable option for those looking for a smartphone with built-in GPS. Uhh, I'm not sure what HTC's definition of affordable is, but with a price tag of 449 euros ($652 U.S.), I wouldn't exactly call it a bargain. It comes preloaded with TomTom Navigator 6 software, so along with the assisted GPS, users will be able to get turn-by-turn directions, points … Read more

Man, I could really use this cell phone right now. Today, along with a slew of other devices, Nokia introduced its Nokia 6210 Navigator phone at GSMA 2008. Like its predecessor, the Nokia 6110 Navigator, which was announced at 3GSM last year, the 6210 Navigator has built-in GPS (integrated and assisted) but adds the new Nokia Maps 2.0 application and an integrated compass for pedestrian guidance. There's also an accelerometer onboard to more accurately track your position on the map as you're walking around town. (Seriously, I wish I had this phone in hand right now as … Read more

It's not often that you get people volunteering to get stuck in traffic. However, that's exactly what happened today in Northern California. About 150 students from the University of California at Berkeley participated a project devised to test the potential of using GPS-enabled, internet-connected cell phones as aids for reporting real-time information on traffic congestion. The test by the university was done in collaboration with Nokia, and the California Transportation Department. Real-time traffic services are nothing new. Services from Satellite companies, such as XM and Sirius, as well as maps from Google and Yahoo provide color-coded estimates of … Read more

UNION CITY, Calif.--On a cool, overcast morning in the parking lot of a Lowe's hardware store, 100 UC Berkeley students lined up in rows ready to jump into a bevy of idling vehicles.

With media and VIPs from companies like Nokia, Navteq, General Motors, BMW, and CalTrans looking on, wave after wave of students left the parking lot to drive a 10-mile stretch of the nearby 880 freeway as part of a large-scale experiment to test how cell phones can monitor and predict traffic.

The test, conducted all day Friday, was put on by the California Center for … Read more

Youth-oriented mobile carrier Helio announced Wednesday that it has launched a bar and restaurant search site through a partnership with Buzzd, which also powers the mobile sites for local events and entertainment services like TimeOut New York, and Flavorpill.

Helio's new service, which is ad-supported, lets people in major U.S. cities search on the mobile Web site--linked from the home page of the carrier's browser--for bars, clubs, and restaurants. Most of the data will be pulled from Buzzd partners like Flavorpill, TimeOut, and the IAC-owned Citysearch. Added on, however, will be "event feeds" with specific … Read more

Garmin makes GPS devices. Garmin makes navigation software and accessories for cell phones and smartphones. Garmin makes cell phones...wait, what? Yep, you read right. Today, the GPS manufacturer took the wraps off its first smartphone at a press event in New York: the Garmin Nuvifhone. It's a GSM/HSDPA mobile that runs on Garmin's own operating system and focuses on, no surprise, navigation. The device will come preloaded with maps of North America (or Eastern or Western Europe for all our international readers) and points of interest. In addition, it offers turn-by-turn voice directions, Google Local Search … Read more

LAS VEGAS--A company called Geotate hopes to use an Internet service to lower a significant barrier to the technologically challenging practice of geotagging.

Geotagging, which uses a global positioning system to attach location data to photos to build in more descriptive data, is at present a difficult and largely manual process appealing mostly to serious photo enthusiasts. That's largely because it's too hard right now to build GPS directly into a camera for automated geotagging, so photographers must carry a separate GPS device and then marry the location data to the photos after the fact.

But Geotate, which … Read more

Someday soon, you might be able to figure out where you are in the world by staring.

Researchers from South Korea's Yonsei University will present a paper at the International Solid State Circuits Conference next week on a system that spits out two-dimensional coordinates for the object or place that a person is focusing on. The same group has worked on several eye interfaces in the past, mostly for people with disabilities. By integrating eye interfaces with GPS information, users can apparently get geographic information. The group presents its paper on Monday, February 3.

ISSCC is one of the … Read more

The moment the Cowon Q5W portable video player hit my desk, I knew I would be in for a long review. After legions of iPod fans called foul when Apple failed to deliver a high-capacity touch-screen video player last fall (a 16GB iPod Touch just won't cut it for some folks) Cowon's long-promised 60GB Q5W seemed like the perfect cure. The Cowon Q5W is no mere PVP, however, considering that Cowon saw fit to infuse it with a treasure trove of coveted features such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, composite video output, MSN Messenger, and even GPS navigation.

So why … Read more