Dual use GPS for road and trail
I want a GPS that does it all; this has got to be one of the most frequent requests I hear.
Several companies have tried to create GPS receivers that will work well on the road or in your hand — for backcountry use, geocaching or what have you. The latest example is the Garmin [...]
Tech talk – raster vs. vector, or why has it taken so long to get aerial photos and USGS topos?
What makes aerial photos and USGS topo maps so different that we’ve been waiting years to get them on our GPS screens? A few companies have started offering these images in the past year. But so far, Garmin, the king of GPS receivers, has not had this capability (with the exception of limited aerial imagery [...]
Switching between highway and topo maps on Garmin handhelds
Oftentimes, handheld users will load both highway and topo maps to their unit. Garmin handhelds will show the highway maps by default. The highway map (City Navigator or City Select) for an area must be turned off before you can see the topo map. This is especially problematic when you have a lot of maps [...]
What’s a GPS mouse?
A post about a GPS mouse on Slippery Brick caught my attention this morning. To quote:
This is an interesting combination of peripherals if nothing else. A company called Navilock out of Germany who specializes in GPS products has produced a Bluetooth enabled mouse that also acts as a GPS receiver. This is convenient in that [...]
Top posts of 2006: The year in review
While blogs like this have a lot going for them, one of their weaknesses is that old posts quickly get lost, so I like to do an annual review, and highlight more recent popular posts in the sidebar. With that introduction, here are the top 20 most popular posts from 2006, and a few others [...]
50 GPS message boards
Call them message boards, discussion groups, online forums, or some other combination of those terms — Connecting with other folks on the web, who are using your particular brand of GPS can be one of the quickest ways to get an answer on anything from basic noobie queries to perplexing technical questions. Especially helpful are [...]
Converting GPS file formats
What to do? You’ve got a .tpo track file from TOPO! that you want to put on your GPS. or you’re dying to see how a .gpx file looks in Google Earth. Well, you’re not alone. Thousands of others GPS aficianados struggle with the same alphabet soup, and concommitant translation problems. Fortunately, solutions are at [...]
How to load Garmin TOPO maps to your hard drive
Last month my wife and I took a mountain biking vacation in the Lake Tahoe area and, of course, we took our GPS receivers along for the ride! While I posted a trip report, complete with GPS tracklogs, I haven’t quite fessed up to one thing.
You see, I took my laptop along for managing [...]
Best GPS traffic service: XM or FM/TMC?
Reader Martin L. emailed me the other day, asking about GPS traffic services, among other things. I couldn’t really tell him which service, XM NavTraffic or TMC – the Traffic Message Channel (FM) was better, so I suggested he check out the GpsPasSion traffic forum. Martin came across this thread, comparing XM vs. FM traffic [...]
GPS myths
GPSReview.net lists 10 myths about GPS. I’ve covered a number of these in detail in the following posts:
Can my GPS be used to track me?
GPS for your car: Factory-installed or aftermarket?
SiRFstar III – Why it’s a big deal
Does heavy cloud cover affect GPS reception?
Flying with GPS on commercial airliners
