Sep 23

Ricoh’s rugged G700SE point-and-shoot does Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS and more (eyes-on)

Posted in: camera, digicam, digital camera, DigitalCamera, gps, hands-on, point and shoot, PointAndShoot, rugged, Today's Chili

And you thought Ricoh’s G700 was fully featured. Premiering at Photokina this week, the souped-up G700SE is a modified version of the G700 that appeared last month, with this guy able to accept add-on modules that can boost functionality by a good bit. The prototype unit here in Germany was showcased alongside of the GP-1 GPS dongle and a BR-1 bar code scanning module, with the latter meant more for governments and enterprises. It’s still encased in a dust- and water-resistant shell, and it packs integrated 802.11b/g WiFi and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR to boot. All of the other specs remain the same from the original G700 (which you can peek here), and if you’re looking to buy one, you’ll have to wait until the earlier half of 2011 for it to splash down at around €799 ($1,070) — according to booth representatives, anyway.

Oh, and for fans of the GXR series, we stumbled upon an A12 28mm f/2.5 lens module that’ll slot right into the company’s interchangeable camera starting in Q4. So long as you have €649 ($869) to spare.

Gallery: Ricoh G700SE hands-on at Photokina 2010

Gallery: Ricoh A12 (28mm) lens attachment hands-on at Photokina 2010

Ricoh’s rugged G700SE point-and-shoot does Bluetooth, WiFi, GPS and more (eyes-on) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Sep 2010 09:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sep 22

Samsung Captivate gets GPS fix, other Galaxy S versions wait patiently

Posted in: Android, att, breaking news, BreakingNews, GalaxyS, Google, gps, samsung, Today's Chili, update, upgrade

Sammy just hit us up with a brief statement that should make Captivate owners jump clean out of their seats and do a spit take if they’re enjoying a cup of joe:

“An update to improve the Samsung Captivate’s GPS performance is now available. Captivate customers will receive a notification on their device that an update is available and will simply need to download the file to update their phone. The updates will be pushed to customers’ devices over the next few weeks.

The update for the Captivate will also improve additional device functions, such as media scanning time, add the full version of Quickoffice and address Microsoft Exchange 2003 policy support.”

Awesome, right? Of course, the proof is in the pudding — we’ll need to wait and see how “fixed” the GPS really is after this gets installed, but it’s a start. Notably, this doesn’t seem to include Froyo, so we don’t know whether these guys are going to be going the British or Spanish routes in getting that deployed.

Update: We’ve independently confirmed with AT&T that this update does include GPS improvements.

Samsung Captivate gets GPS fix, other Galaxy S versions wait patiently originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Sep 2010 11:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sep 22

Porsche stuffs modern NAV into retro radio, tips hat to loyal 911 owners

Posted in: automobile, gps, nav, navigation, radio, Retro, Today's Chili

Porsche knows better than anyone that it’ll take a miracle for owners of many older 911s to upgrade, so rather than crying over it, it’s figuring out a new way to milk stale customers. The head unit you see above is described as the “Classic Radio Navigation System,” and apparently, it’s designed to fit within the dashes of 911 motorcars built between 1963 and 1977. In short, it offers a modern-day navigation experience within a radio that still fits the motif of those gorgeous pieces of iron, and at €595 ($776), it shouldn’t be a tough sell to any true collector. Word on the street has it that it’ll hit Porsche dealers next month, ensuring that you’ll finally be able to make that Thanksgiving jaunt to grandmother’s house without getting turned around. Now, if only we knew what kind of mapping software it’ll ship with…

Porsche stuffs modern NAV into retro radio, tips hat to loyal 911 owners originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Sep 2010 02:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sep 17

Espresso and GPS Enliven Our European Road Tour

Posted in: Cars, Ford, gps, Miscellaneous, Today's Chili

Playing the Eigenharp, while driving around the world in a Ford Fiesta.

Editor’s note: Wired.com contributor Jeremy Hart is making a 60-day, 15,000-mile drive around the world with a few mates in a pair of Ford Fiestas. He’s filing occasional reports from the road.

Another week, another continent. As I write this (on my trusty iPad) we are blasting across Europe. The Fiesta World Tour 2010 has left The New World behind and is heading deep into the Old World. The Middle East is on the horizon and Asia is not far off.

The last week in the U.S. and Canada was nothing but gadget hassle. The once-wonderful Virgin MiFi became a liability for all of us when it refused to do the one job it was designed to do and had, up to then, been doing brilliantly: Be a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot in our Ford Fiesta.

Sleep is a luxury on a global drive so I did not enjoy wasting an hour to the useless Virgin Mobile help desk, only to be told their server was down. The advice from the same desk the next morning was to reboot the device using a paperclip. Not easy at 70mph on I-95.

But for the last day of the U.S. leg the MiFi finally started working and found me (via my iPad) a great place for breakfast between Boston and NYC: the Cosmic Omelet in Manchester CT. Then it helped guide us (when the TomTom and in-car satellite navigation system did not) to the spot I had found on GoogleEarth from which to film our arrival in The Big Apple.

The SPOT tracker uses GPS and satellite signals to let you track our location wherever we go.

The second technical hiccup came when I gave up trying to ignite my Spot Satellite Messenger for you guys to follow our progress. I called FindMeSpot’s 800 number, only to be told the one I had bought from BestBuy in LA was a recalled unit. The Spot public relations people FedExed one to me in time for me to get it going for the last few miles of the U.S. trip. It is now well up and running and you can see where we have been at. But I will turn it off when we are in more sensitive areas.

Leg 2 started in Ireland, on the far side of The Pond, at the Lisdoonvarna matchmaking festival. (Don’t ask.) I’d hoped for a Guinness gadget of some kind from Dublin but only when we got across to Wales did the gadgets start ramping up.

Welsh is a revived language, and it’s thriving so well that there is even a Welsh version of Scrabble. There are no Z’s, but you get maximum points if you can use the A. We played it on the railway station of the town with what I believe is the longest URL the world.

In England we stopped by our headquarters in the Inc office where gadgets galore were stacked for our next leg.

  • Iridium satellite phone
  • Camping Gaz car cool box
  • Eigenharp computer instrument
  • Handpresso pump action espresso maker
  • Car kettle (a hand espresso machine needs hot water)
  • European TomTom app for the iPhone
  • Apple wireless keyboard for the iPad
  • 2 Lifeventure first aid kits


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Sep 16

Samsung Galaxy Tab keyboard, desktop, and car docks eyes-on

Posted in: galaxy, GalaxyTab, gps, peripheral, Peripherals, samsung, samsung galaxy tab, SamsungGalaxyTab, tab, Today's Chili

The press release from earlier today provided all the textual details, but now we’ve gotten our own eyes on the Samsung Galaxy Tab accessory lineup — not to be touched at the event, but we could gaze all the same. Pictured above is the $99.99 keyboard dock that gives you a full physical QWERTY on top of a charger / sync dock, along with stereo audio output. Then comes the desktop dock (formerly referred to as the HDMI dock) that allows you to watch videos up to 1080p, view pictures, and listen to music via HDMI All the pictures are below, can ya dig?out. Last but not least is the car / GPS dock for $99.99, for GPS turn-by-turn navigation on the go.

Gallery: Samsung Galaxy Tab keyboard, desktop, and car docks eyes-on

Samsung Galaxy Tab keyboard, desktop, and car docks eyes-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Sep 2010 22:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sep 16

Skyhook sues Google for business interference and patent infringement

Posted in: gps, lawsuit, legal, patent, Today's Chili, wifi

You might not know the company by name but you’ve almost certainly taken advantage of Skyhook‘s WiFi location-based services if you’re a smartphone nerd. And let’s face it, as an Engadget reader, you are. Now the company is suing Google for anti-competitive practices and patent infringement claiming that the ad giant used its control over Android to “force device manufacturers” to not only integrate Google’s location technology instead of Skyhook’s “superior end user experience,” but also terminate contract obligations with Skyhook where they existed. Specifically, Skyhook says that Google wielded its power against handset manufacturers by “threatening directly or indirectly to deny timely and equal access to evolving versions of the Android operating system and other Google mobile applications.” Boston-based Skyhook filed two lawsuits after negotiations with Google broke down, a business interference lawsuit filed in the Massachusetts Superior Court and a patent infringement lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts. According to Skyhook CEO Ted Morgan, “The message that Android is open is certainly not entirely true. Devices makers can license technology from other companies and then not be able to deploy it.” Meow.

Skyhook sues Google for business interference and patent infringement originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 16 Sep 2010 04:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sep 10

Your Lost Gadgets Will Find Each Other

Posted in: gps, mit, R&D and Inventions, Robots, Today's Chili, Wireless

Graphic by Christine Daniloff, via MIT News Office

Sometimes when one of my remotes is missing, I interrogate the others: “Where’s your friend? I know you know something!” In the future, with wireless positioning systems, a version of that method might actually almost work.

Researchers at MIT’s Wireless Communications and Network Sciences Group think networks of devices that communicate their positions to each other will work better than all of the devices transmitting to a single receiver. The latter is how GPS works, and if you’ve used it, you know it isn’t always very precise. In the lab, MIT’s robots can spot a wireless transmitter within a millimeter.

This seems almost intuitive: the more “eyes” you have on an object, the easier it is to triangulate — the robot version of “the wisdom of crowds.” But the key conceptual breakthrough here isn’t actually the number of transmitters or their network arrangement, but what they’re transmitting. MIT News’s Larry Hardesty writes:

Among [the research group’s] insights is that networks of wireless devices can improve the precision of their location estimates if they share information about their imprecision. Traditionally, a device broadcasting information about its location would simply offer up its best guess. But if, instead, it sent a probability distribution — a range of possible positions and their likelihood — the entire network would perform better as a whole. The problem is that sending the probability distribution requires more power and causes more interference than simply sending a guess, so it degrades the network’s performance. [The] group is currently working to understand the trade-off between broadcasting full-blown distributions and broadcasting sparser information about distributions.

Much of this research is still theoretical, or has only been deployed in lab settings. But Princeton’s H. Vincent Poor is optimistic about the MIT group’s approach: “I don’t see any major obstacles for transferring their basic research to practical applications. In fact, their research was motivated by the real-world need for high-accuracy location-awareness.” Like precisely which cushion my remote control is underneath.

Warning: Very Dry Flash Video Of Robots Finding Things Follows

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Sep 08

TomTom offers free iPhone 4 adapter for Car Kit

Posted in: adapter, Apple, free, gps, iPhone, nav, navigation, peripheral, Today's Chili, tomtom

We still maintain that you’ve got better options than TomTom when it comes to iPhone GPS software, but if you pulled the trigger before giving yourself a moment to consider what you were actually doing, this here news may just interest you. In an effort to maintain compatibility with Apple’s latest and greatest iPhone, TomTom is now including a simple adapter for all Car Kit orders going out on September 1st or later. If you ordered one prior to that, you can apply down in the source link for a freebie to be sent your way. Or just hack something up in the garage that looks like the insert above. Your call, vaquero.

Update: Full press release after the break.

[Thanks, Dan]

Continue reading TomTom offers free iPhone 4 adapter for Car Kit

TomTom offers free iPhone 4 adapter for Car Kit originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sep 08

Run-Tracking App Knows When You Stop

Posted in: apps, gps, ios, iPhone, Phones, Sports, Today's Chili

Abvio’s trio of motion-tracking iPhone fitness apps have been updated with a major new feature: they know when you stop.

This information isn’t used to detect the lazier amongst us, but to give more accurate readings of your times and average speed. The three apps, Cyclemeter, Runmeter and Walkmeter, now use GPS signals to detect when you stop moving. They then “roll back your elapsed time to when the stop started,” adding this chunk of time to a new “stopped time” counter. This means that when you next get stuck at the traffic lights (or stop for a beer), you won’t see your average speed

It’s a useful feature, and one that is curiously lacking on almost all other apps in the store. It joins some other neat options, too. First is the new calendar-sharing function, which automatically adds your workouts to your calendar, from whence they can sync across the cloud. Better is the integration of the iPhone’s inline remote, which can be used to stop and start the timer with the phone still in your pocket.

But perhaps best of all is the apps’ ghost-mode, which will project your previously recorded runs onto the map so you can compete against yourself. This, I don’t have to say, is lifted straight from Super Mario Kart and is quite awesome.

The apps cost $5, but it appears that you can just buy one and use it for cycling, running or walking (aka running slowly). Available now.

Abvio product page [Abvio. Thanks, Lori!]

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Sep 07

App review: Nike+ GPS

Posted in: app, Apple, application, gps, ios, iPhone, IphoneApp, review, Today's Chili

Nike’s dalliances with technology should be familiar to our readers by now, with the crowning jewel of course being the Nike+ run-tracking software that pairs a shoe-mounted sensor with your iPhone or iPod. Well, it was. The gargantuan sportswear company is moving with the times and throwing the hardware away with the introduction of its all-new Nike+ GPS application. No longer restricting our running shoe choice is groovy, but the app itself has the even loftier aim of simultaneously acting as your fitness guru, motivator and record keeper. And all it asks in return is access to the accelerometer and GPS modules inside your iOS 4-equipped iPhone or iPod touch (the latter’s lack of GPS means it loses out on route mapping, but all other features are retained). So, let’s see how this baby runs, shall we?

Gallery: Nike+ GPS app screenshots


Continue reading App review: Nike+ GPS

App review: Nike+ GPS originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 15:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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