GPS reviews, news, tips, tricks and deals
I saw yesterday that REI currently has the Garmin Oregon 600 marked down to $250 from the normal $400 sale price. I’m not sure when the reduced price launched or when it will expire, so if you’re in the market for a great outdoor GPS unit for someone on your Christmas list (or even for yourself) then I might suggest taking advantage of it when you can. read more
From everyone here at GPSTracklog, I wanted to take today and just say thank you to all of the veterans and active military members who have served to protect the United States over the years. Through your hard work, dedication and sacrifice, millions of Americans have been able to enjoy the freedoms that America offers. So thank you, and Happy Veterans Day!
It’s all over the news in New York: on Tuesday a new law went into effect that makes stalking via GPS a Class B misdemeanor, which generally means a fine of up to $500 or up to 3 months in jail if you’re convicted. But there’s a catch. In order for the law to apply to you, you would have to first be aware that you were being tracked, and then commuincate to your tracker that their actions were unwelcome.
While I applaud the sentiment of the law—GPS tracking is becoming quite the problem in many cases of domestic abuse in particular—I can’t help but feel like it gives those tracking quite a bit of leeway. How many people in such situations are willing to confront their suspected stalker and ask them to stop? There is a lot of gray area in the law as-is, so it will be interesting to see how the law interpretations develop and whether or not a federal law will follow. read more
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 one of Magellan’s three new massive GPS units released this week. All three units measure 7 inches and are designed for larger vehicles. read more
From what it sounds like, Fitbit has refocused its attention on serious athletes with the upcoming release of several new fitness trackers. Two of the new trackers seem to be remodeled versions of the Fitbit Force with a few extra features. But the one that caught my attention was the Fitbit Surge—a new ‘superwatch’ that is designed to have all of the activity, fitness and sleep tracking you could ever want, complete with built-in GPS capabilities.
Nothing official has been announced yet, and I am aware that normally fitness trackers aren’t the sort of thing that we would cover. However, the built-in GPS rumored to be in the Fitbit Surge is what caught my attention. In addition to the normal fitness tracking abilities, this new watch/tracker will also be able to map your routes and combine it with fitness data to get a complete look at your run. read more
Coursera has a free course in GPS available right now. The course is titled “GPS: An Introduction to Satellite Navigation, with an interactive Worldwide Laboratory using Smartphones” and will run from October 13 to November 24—a total of 6 weeks. The course will cover the fundamentals of GPS and how it works, along with ‘backyard’ laboratory experiments using GPS enabled Android smartphones.
While the course has technically already begin, free enrollment is still open. I’d recommend jumping on now if you are at all interested. Students who complete the course with certain eligibility will receive a Statement of Accomplishment. This course is free and will be taught by Stanford professors Per Enge and Frank van Diggelen. read more
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 shows the erroneous orbits of the two wayward Galileo satellites. This week, the board finally announced the cause behind the malfunction. Read on for this and more GPS news! read more
In honor of the Alabama Park System’s 75th Anniversary, a new app has been released that will give users comprehensive guides to all state parks in Alabama in one app. The Alabama State Parks Pocket Ranger app joins a suite of apps mapping out state parks, fishing guides, hunting guides and more for nearly 30 states. These apps provide not only a wonderful tool for exploring your state parks, but they are all free on iTunes and Google Play. Just search “Pocket Ranger” with your state name. read more
Back at the start of the year we saw some historic rainfall here in the United Kingdom. Rivers burst their banks and huge swathes of the countryside were under several feet of water. It made planning the weekly geocaching trip even more difficult – I didn’t want to do a twenty mile circular walk only to find the final mile back to the car blocked by floodwater.
It was in my frustration of consulting governmental flood maps and correlating them with geocaching maps that I discovered the wonderful world of the Greasemonkey or Tampermonkey script.
Greasemonkey and Tampermonkey are plugins (for Firefox and Google Chrome respectively) that allow you to install scripts to modify your favorite web pages. It all sounds a bit complicated but in essence they allow you to do things such as get Google Search results to appear in two columns rather than just one, or show the buffer speed of the YouTube video you are watching. read more
When you are hunting, there are a lot of things that you have to be aware of to ensure your hunt is legal and now, with Garmin‘s new Hunt View Maps, you’ll have one less thing to worry about. This series of preloaded microSD cards contain essential map data showing public vs private land so you don’t ever have to question where you are. The maps also contain satellite imagery, 24K TOPO mapping and routable roads. The maps are currently only available for Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Utah.
The maps are $80 each and are available for purchase on Garmin’s website now. Each map comes with information for the entire state and provides borders and boundaries for public and private land as well as rural roads for better navigation. The card also supports turn-by-turn navigation for rural roads to help hunters navigate in unfamiliar country. read more
