Hasta La Gadget!

As everyone knows, Garmin and TomTom have their backs against the ropes in a fight to remain relevant in an age of free GPS turn-by-turn navigation on smartphones (thanks Google and Nokia). While dedicated personal navigators are almost always superior to their converged competition, the gap has certainly narrowed such that it’s become difficult to justify another device when an increasing number of people already carry a fine navigation device in their pockets. But that’s just gut instinct talking, where’s the hard evidence? Certainly not speculative stock prices. A good place to start is in forward-looking financial statements like the one Garmin, the leading navigation device maker in the US, just issued. Gamin says that it expects competition to cause prices to decline by about 10% in the personal navigation device (PND) industry putting pressure on margins, and thus profits, in 2010. It also sees flat or slightly declining revenue over the same period. Fortunately for Garmin, it has a diversified product offering that includes the Nuvifone. However, Garmin admits to being disappointed by sales of the handset that “won” our Editor’s Choice award for Worst Gadget of the Year.

Things aren’t all doom and gloom, though. Garmin has a pair of Nuvifones in the chute including the Android-powered A50. And its Q4 results of $1.43 per share easily beat analyst expectations of 95 cents a share. Even TomTom surprised many last week with a 1% increase in Q4 revenue and net profit of €75 million compared to a €989 million loss a year ago. So there’s some hope left for the dedicated PND market… but not much.

Filed under: Cellphones, GPS

Garmin and TomTom cling to profits, hope originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Feb 2010 02:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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At a press conference Wednesday, Nintendo officially unveiled the remaining details about the next DS to hit North America. The DSi XL features even larger screens (93 percent bigger compared with the DS Lite) and has a much wider viewing angle.

Ford’s been keeping itself busy on the navigation front, and while you may have noticed that 2010 just began a few weeks ago (on the Gregorian calendar, anyway), 2011 model year vehicles are already on the minds of those in Dearborn. 2011 models with voice-activated navigation systems will be getting an update that brings along HOV logic, helping users who travel with a buddy to get from point A to point B more hastily if carpool lanes are nearby. Of course, only 2,500 miles of those blanket America, so a few other updates might be intriguing to those of you who are sane enough to live outside of the rat race. Branded POI icons, higher density street labeling and HD Radio will come standard on voice-controlled NAV systems, and potentially most interesting is the notion that “integration with SYNC Traffic, Directions and Information (TDI) app — enabling new features like the ability to download destinations sent from a home or work computer from Mapquest” — will hit later on in the year. Full release is after the break.

Continue reading Ford adding HOV logic, ability to download outside Mapquest destinations to 2011 NAV systems

Ford adding HOV logic, ability to download outside Mapquest destinations to 2011 NAV systems originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Feb 2010 00:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on December 12, 2006 by CyberNet.

Yesterday I pointed out Google’s Internet Explorer 7 site that promoted an “Optimized for Google” version of the browser. It looked remarkably similar to Yahoo’s so my original thought was that Microsoft offered some sort of generic template that people could use.

Last night I received an email from a member of Yahoo!’s public relations team and it pointed me to Jeremy Zawodny’s blog. As the email states Google straight-up copied Yahoo’s page:

Saw your post about Google’s IE7 page, and just wanted to let you know that Yahoo! designed its original IE7 landing page – it’s not based on a template from Microsoft. If you look closely at the Google landing page, you’ll notice that it uses the same graphic with the Yahoo! toolbar, and the red “Y!” is blurred out.

That really sucks for Yahoo! but it looks like Google has now changed the page to look more unique (as pictured above). Matt Cutt’s, a Google employee, has mentioned the event on his personal blog saying:

I can only speak for me personally on this. If Jeremy looked into it and says that it wasn’t a template from Microsoft, I believe him. That would mean that the Yahoo! page was used as a template for Google’s IE7 promo page. I can’t say why someone at Google would decide to do that, but to the Yahoo! UI designer whose page was copied: my apologies. In my personal opinion, it sucks when someone else copies a page layout without attribution.

I am glad that Google corrected the issue so quickly but I am still in awe that they even did it in the first place. I guess even the largest companies look for ways to cut corners when they don’t think it will be noticed.

Thanks to the people who also mentioned this in the comments in the last article!

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It’s 2010, which means there’s a significant chance that your cubicle work could be done from absolutely anywhere. For those still stuck under the burden of old-school management, here’s an idea that might just nab you that raise you’ve been longing for: the CubeTube. Engineered by Solaroad Technologies, this indoor photovoltaic electrical generator straps onto the edges and tops of conventional cubicles and collects light from every angle. Internal batteries are charged up, and power is instantly available for the decade-old Latitude and CRT monitor that’s still residing on your desk. It sounds like you’ll need to ping the company directly for pricing quotes and the like, but if you managers are seriously considering this for your office, maybe they should first calculate the cost and carbon savings from letting their subordinates telecommute. Just sayin’.

Solaroad’s CubeTube adds solar panels to your cube, lowers the cost of you working there originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Feb 2010 21:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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