« Yeah! - Im a Dork! So what? | Main | Achmed - The Dead Terrorist »

Christmas Gadgetry

I have a Nokia 8125 Cellphone thats about 2 years old. I love it, I can do most anything with it, from watching tivo-to-go downloaded movies from my tivo, to using it to watch my slingbox, why it even allows me to make phone calls, but it was, in my opinion, missing just one thing.

A GPS.

Now, having a GPS in a cellphone sounds silly until you realize that having a GPS in your cellphone is about as handy a thing as you could ever want. Let's say you're travelling to a new town and you need to find a bookstore. What do you do? ask someone? Oh come on now man... Wouldnt it be cool if you could just get the cellphone out, type on the GPS and get the directions, turn by turn instructions and even the phone number of the place and off you go! ( This actually happened to me in Denver last May, and it was got me started thinking about how much I wanted a GPS that was a part of my cellphone.)

GPS receivers are starting to become more prevalent ( Witness the newest incarnation of the 8125, the "tilt")
but for us "fogeys" who dont want to get a new phone every year, there is help.

You say you want GPS on your phone but you dont have one? Got a bluetooth enabled "smart phone"? Well try this, the General Satellite BT-359CS GPS Reciever

359.jpg
Yes, Thats the actual size! It's about a 1/2 inch thick.

This GPS receiver runs for 11 hours on battery power and communicates to the cellphone via bluetooth. With the addition of free software like Yahoo Go! and Google maps, you can now have a helpful GPS for travel or for your car, right there on your modern electronic swiss army knife, the cellphone. Better still, the the GPS software will also display route, Points of Interest and traffic information at the same time, which is an advanced feature on most car based GPS'es.

You say you got a small business and you need to track all your folks as they travel on a webpage? You say you got teenage kids and you want to know their whereabouts through the day?

Well, Try this.

Here you have one GPS device that can work with your cellphone or your PC which you can carry with you anywhere. And for hobbyists, the USB connection and high battery time makes it an intriguing update for your Lego Mindstorms NXT

What? Doesnt everyone have an NXT? Doesnt everyone have an NXT attached to their Remote Control Airplanes? No?

So, its just me then?

UPDATE: I've just finished testing this with the phone/gps. It works, and it works very, very well and costs nothing.

Posted @ December 27, 2007 11:17 AM | Current Affairs

Trackbacks

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://varifrank.com/MT/mt-tb.cgi/1027

Comments

For the money, I prefer the HREF="http://shop.delorme.com/OA_HTML/DELibeCCtdItemDetail.jsp?item=26570§ion=10092">DeLorme BlueTooth GPS.

You get full maps, applications for both your phone and your laptop and you can use the receiver with USB Only Laptops (it supports GPS over the USB Port; the G-Sat unit only uses the USB for charging).

Since you're into aviation, have you looked at PocketFMS?

Posted by: Jeff W at December 28, 2007 04:57 PM

Post a Comment

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)


Remember me?