Archives for 2015

Komodo Looking for Kickstarter Funding

April 7, 2015 By Liz E. Leave a Comment

Every once in a while I like to skim through Kickstarter and Indiegogo to see if there are any promising new technologies looking to enter the GPS market like the extremely successful Trakr or the Iotera. Today, I heard about a new GPS tracker from KOMODO Technologies and wanted to tell you about it. As always, I caution readers to be wary with crowdfunding projects, as there is always some risk. This one, however, looks like pretty minimal risk and for the right user, quite a bit of reward. read more

Filed Under: GPS Tracking

Voice-Controlled GPS Helmet Coming Soon

April 6, 2015 By Liz E. 1 Comment

Reuters reported yesterday that a Russian company has invented a new smart helmet that will display GPS navigation tips on the visor so motorcyclists can use navigational technology without having to look away from the road. Only slightly bigger than a regular motorcycle helmet, the visor will have something similar to a HUD display. Originally slated to be released last year, the helmet is still in the pre production stages and expected to go on sale this summer. read more

Filed Under: Auto

TomTom Expands Maps to Australia

April 5, 2015 By Liz E. Leave a Comment

TomTom, the Dutch-based mapping and navigational company recently announced that it has acquired Location Navigation including the WhereIs map assets and customers from Sensis. With this acquisition, TomTom will be able to both improve and expand its mapping into Australia.

Currently, TomTom already offers maps for Australia, New Zealand and Asia. However, the addition of these maps will help improve TomTom’s reach and allow it to release real-time mapping and other features to these countries. read more

Filed Under: Maps, TomTom

Navigate the World With Pac Man

April 4, 2015 By Liz E. Leave a Comment

I have a confession to make. The following story doesn’t really relate to GPS, but since I know that most of you probably don’t use Google Maps, I wanted to share it anyway. Happy Easter!

Have you ever looked at a map and thought, “This would make a really fun Pac Man Game!” Yeah, me neither, but that’s apparently why you and I don’t work at Google. In honor of April Fool’s, the tech giant released a new Pac Man game skin for the Google Maps program. You can select any location in the world that has enough roads and then waste countless minutes guiding the hungry little yellow circle through the streets. It’s a complete time waster, and also an absolute blast. read more

Filed Under: Featured

This Week in GPS — April 3, 2015

April 3, 2015 By Liz E. Leave a Comment

This week in GPS is a weekly link roundup of (mostly) GPS related odds and ends, from GPS Tracklog and other places around the Web. This week’s featured image is the world’s smallest cycling GPS which was announced by Lezyne this week. It will be available in the US next month.

Here are some other things that happened this week in the world of GPS: read more

Filed Under: Featured, More GPS News, This week in GPS

GPS May Be To Blame for Accident

April 2, 2015 By Liz E. 2 Comments

photo by John J. Watkins, The Times

On Saturday, a woman was killed and her husband injured after driving off the ramp of a partially demolished bridge in East Chicago. According to NWI, who covered the incident, the bridge had been closed since 2009 and had orange road closed signs and concrete barriers to indicate that the bridge was no longer in service. read more

Filed Under: GPS News

TomTom Traffic Analyzes Evening Congestion

April 1, 2015 By Liz E. Leave a Comment

Yesterday, TomTom released its annual Traffic Index which analyzes more than 200 cities around the world to determine traffic congestion in specific cities and areas during certain times of the day. Unsurprisingly, evening congestion was the most congested time of day pretty much everywhere around the world. In fact, the average commuter spent an extra 100 hours sitting in evening rush hour traffic in 2014.

Here are the top 10 cities that TomTom found to have the worst traffic in 2014: read more

Filed Under: TomTom

DARPA Working on GPS Successor

March 31, 2015 By Liz E. Leave a Comment

On Thursday, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) published a document outlining current and completed research projects conducted for the U.S. military. Inside the document, which you can download by clicking here, was information on what could be the successor to GPS in the coming years.

If you read this blog at all, then you’re likely aware of how incredibly pervasive and useful GPS has become as well as the potential downfalls of GPS. All it takes is one GPS jammer, which can be purchased online, or the correct conditions to make the signals unusable so it’s no surprise that the government has been working on alternative technologies. read more

Filed Under: GPS News

Satellite Launch Roundup

March 30, 2015 By Liz E. Leave a Comment

The last week of March has been a really busy one as far as navigational satellite launches go. Nearly all of the major constellations—with the marked exception of Russia’s GLONASS—have either launched or scheduled launches, and they are nearly all making huge steps towards completion or upgrades to the systems.

As you all know, I greatly enjoy writing about the launches of the various navigational satellites be they GPS, Galileo, GLONASS or even regional navigational systems like India’s IRNSS. It’s probably partially because I find anything involving space really interesting and also because it’s kind of exciting to see steps being taken towards a truly global GNSS.

Anyway, rather than spreading it all out, I thought I’d just do a brief overview of the launches: read more

Filed Under: Satellites

TomTom GO Mobile Launched for Android

March 29, 2015 By Liz E. 1 Comment

While no one can deny that dedicated GPS devices are more reliable when it comes to directions and navigation, smartphones are just so convenient many consumers have a hard time justifying the additional expense on a separate device. Well, in order to stay on top of consumer trends, TomTom announced earlier this week that it was debuting a new mobile app for consumers to replace the old TomTom Navigation App.

This new app is called TomTom GO Mobile and like the old TomTom Navigation app, includes almost exactly the same features as you would find on a dedicated TomTom device including traffic, points of interest, offline maps, 3D imaging, quick searches and more. The app is free to download on Google Play but an iTunes version has not been released. The app is available in a range of countries. read more

Filed Under: Android apps, Mobile, Mobile apps, TomTom