Hasta La Gadget!

Peek carefully at this picture of a Nikon D300 and you’ll see something unusual. No, it’s not the jaggy lines around the edges of the camera — that comes from the product page. Instead, it’s the little square box to the right of the lens, a tiny Bluetooth receiver which slips into the 10-pin remote terminal of higher-end Nikon DSLRs. Once nestled into place, the Unleashed (its rather odd name) will sip very little power and communicate with any Bluetooth-enabled GPS device, writing the information directly into the image EXIF data.

The dongle will work with the D200, D300, D700, D2X, D2Xs, D2Hs, D3, D3X, and Fuji S5 Pro (this last is a Nikon body in Fuji clothing) and can be bought with an optional shutter adapter. This runs from the unit to the remote release socket and – sometime in the near future – you will be able to fire your camera via Bluetooth, too.

All in all a very smart solution to geotagging. But there’s a hitch. The Unleashed will cost around €200 on launch, which is around $250. Considering it’s wireless, that doesn’t seem too bad next to Nikon’s own (wired) GP-1, which goes for $200. Until you remember that you still need to buy the GPS unit itself.

That’s right. You’re essentially paying $200 for a Nikon-compatible Bluetooth dongle. We’re sure there’s a market out there for this, but we’ll skip it. There might be a reason that the German company behind this widget is called Foolography.

Product page [Foolography via Crave]

U

As with Navigon’s booth yesterday, Garmin’s CeBIT showcase was overflowing with Earthlings. Many of which, as you could likely guess, were swooning over the recently announced nüvi 1200 and 1300 series navigators. Naturally, the flavors found here in Hannover were those with different variations of European maps, but aside from the routes, everything will be the same on North American versions. The hippest addition to these two are the public transit maps, which inform individuals on foot what subway / tube to hop on, where to get off, which bus to take from there and how long to stay on. Frankly, it’s a Euro-tripper’s dream come true. Check out the photo gallery below, and if you’re wondering, there’s evidently no “Engadget” within the confines of “Germany.” We’d argue otherwise, of course.

Filed under: GPS

Garmin nüvi 1200 and 1300 hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 Mar 2009 15:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mio’s rumored Explora K70 is sitting pretty at CeBIT, and while we wait for the full hands-on treatment, we thought an introduction to what appears to be a stunningly loaded GPS phone was in order. Network connectivity is a blow out in the K70 with quad-band GSM, triple-band HSDPA / HSUPA, Bluetooth, WiFi, and GPS which is handled by Qualcomm’s gpsOne chip. The 3.5-inch touchscreen display is a 400×240 WQVGA number, a 3 megapixel camera hides around back, a jog dial’s included for quick scrolling, and it is all powered by Windows Mobile 6. Looking at the spec sheets it seems there will be two different SKUs, a handset-only package and a “Full SKU” that includes in-car charger, device mount, and so forth. We’re suitably impressed, expect more news including dates and pricing as soon as we can get them.

[Via GSMArena]

Filed under: Cellphones, GPS, Handhelds

Mio launches the Explora K70: beauty, 3G, and GPS abound originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 03 Mar 2009 11:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We already knew that Sony’s GPS-equipped HDR-XR520V camcorder (and the slightly lower-end HDR-XR500V and HDR-XR200V models) would start shipping in March, but you’d be rightly skeptical if you thought that meant it’d be arriving closer to the end of the month than the beginning. Sony looks to be bucking the usual trend, however, as the camcorder is now in stock at Amazon and selling for the not-so-discounted price of $1,499 (SonyStyle itself, meanwhile, lists the camcorder as shipping on March 8th). It seems like quantities may be a tad limited to start with, however, as Amazon lists only four left in stock as of this writing. A handful of sellers also appear to have the HDR-XR500V and HDR-XR200V available, which each pack 120GB of storage as opposed to the 240GB on the HDR-XR-520V.

[Thanks, Dave]

Filed under: Digital Cameras, GPS

GPS-equipped Sony HDR-XR520V camcorder now available to order originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 01 Mar 2009 20:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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BMW’s latest iDrive system is actually rather remarkable, but even it will look aged compared to ILENA. Intelligent Learning Navigation, as it’ll be formally known, will reportedly pay attention to your daily driving habits in order to better predict routes and possibly even save a pinch of fuel. Details about the actual inner workings are still a bit vague (and German), but we’re also told that the system will include an intelligent feature that recalls driver preferences based on his / her Bluetooth cellphone. When driver A steps in and pairs things up, the seat will automatically move to their preferred setting, their favorite stations will queue up, etc; obviously, changes are automatically made when driver B steps in for the return leg. There’s no word on when this system is expected to leapfrog the existing navigation system, but you may want to hold back on that impending European Delivery trip if you just can’t live without a GPS that learns.

[Via BMWBlog]

Filed under: GPS, Transportation

BMW purportedly working on adaptive ILENA navigation system originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Feb 2009 07:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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