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Whilst on my ride yesterday, I was testing out a SPOT tracking device along with the SPOT integration into the new Yahoo! Fire Eagle geo-social service.

I’ll do a longer post when our house is not in so much chaos (birthday part deux is going on), but here is what this cutting-edge, super-cool (HTML 6 needs a <sarcasm> tag) device/service managed to pick up yesterday:

I had it in tracking mode (phones home every 10 mins) most of the time and actually deliberately sent a few “OK” check-in messages (that Fire Eagle picked up but does not show in the messages history of the SPOT site). It missed the whole island trek and the trees on the Burke-Gilman seemed to cause it major angst. Those check-in messages were also supposed to make it to my phone & e-mail but never did.

Again, I’ll go into more detail about how it all is supposed to work, but I wanted to toss up a quick post on cautioning folks to perhaps wait a bit for the device and/or service to mature a bit before investing in either.

Technorati Tags: 2008 gps web service web services web20 Array

Jobs’ keynote may have been the center of attention at Macworld 2008, but Garmin took the wraps off of Bobcat, an OS X-only application that will no doubt be the center of all things Garmin GPS-related on your Mac.

It’s a beta (sigh) and Universal application for OS X 10.4+. There is no word on whether they will be charging for the 1.0 release, but I suspect the app will remain free since they make the big bucks on the map$.

Bobcat has the following features:

• allows you to transfer waypoints, tracks, and routes between your Mac and Garmin device and manage your data using your Garmin maps
• provides the ability to search for points of interest from the convenience of your Mac and then send the locations to your Garmin GPS
• serves as a backup tool for your Garmin GPS. You can receive all your waypoints, routes, and tracks from your GPS and Bobcat will save them automatically

If you want to get your Garmin maps from your PC to your Mac, they’ve put together a guide [PDF] to help you along (you’ll need MapConverter for your PC).

Here’s a look at the Bobcat main screen:

I’ll post a full review of Bobcat once I put it through its paces (loading my PC maps, importing from my various Garmin GPS devices and testing out the general functionality).

You can entertain yourself until then by perusing the new Mac section on Garmin’s site and loading some of their Mac software. If you’re at Macworld definitely stop by their booth and cheer them up (Steve can’t have all the attention there).

Technorati Tags: 2008 Apple bobcat Fitness Gadgets Garmin gps macworld os x

From GovernmentExecutive.com:

A terrestrial backup for the satellite-based Global Positioning System endorsed by a wide range of users from the aviation, marine transportation, and telecommunications industries gained a new lease on life in the fiscal 2008 omnibus spending bill passed by the House Monday. The Coast Guard had planned to terminate operation of its LORAN (for Long-Range Navigation) system, which could serve as the backbone of a GPS backup, in fiscal 2008.

The Transportation Department’s Volpe National Transportation Systems Center urged development of an alternative to GPS in a 2001 report that concluded the satellite-based system could be knocked out by jamming its high-frequency low-power signals. The report suggested LORAN as a possible backup. Since the Volpe report was issued, the Coast Guard — at the direction of Congress — has converted most of its LORAN stations, which had a location accuracy of from one quarter of a nautical mile to one nautical mile, to eLORAN stations, which have an accuracy of between eight and 65 feet. GPS also provides precise timing signals for telecommunications companies worldwide, and they urged the Transportation and DHS to adopt eLORAN as a backup during a public comment period earlier this year.

Strangely enough, this very topic has occupied the corners of my mind on the bus lately, especially with so many other nations making their way into space and with so much of our military and civilian infrastructure dependent upon data delivered via satellite. With a terrestrial backup to satellite-based GPS we at least stand a chance of being able to conduct somewhat normal operations if, say, China were to blast a few shiny metal toys out of orbit by “accident”.

[Props to DHS]

Technorati Tags: 2007 gps LORAN security

I’ve said it before, Garmin Is Evil. Not evil in the bad, serial killer way, just evil in the enticing-folks-to-part-with-their-hard-earned-money-by-introducing-new-gadgets-with-killer-features way.

Their latest incarnations of evil are the Edge 605 and the Edge 705, two new cycling computers that have GPS capabilities. The first noticeable difference from the Edge 305 (which I own, along with the ForeRunner 305) is the gorgeous color screen reminiscent of their eTrex series. Both units are also bigger – 2” x 4.3” x 1” vs 1.75” x 3.7” x 0.9” – and have a higher resolution display – 176 x 220 vs 128 x 160. Battery life is also better – 15 hrs vs 12 hrs (and I’ve been very happy with the battery life of the 305), plus the new models sport a microSD card slot to hold map/route data (similar to the eTrex) – this would have been handy on some of my Seattle exploring rides this summer (I would up carrying both my ForeRunner 305 and eTrex.

However, you’ll want to focus your investment on the 705 since that’s where the major new mojo lies (the 605 doesn’t even work with Garmin’s heart rate and speed/cadence sensors).

The Edge 705 will interface with 3^rd-party power meters, which hardcore cyclists will appreciate since that’s the best way to accurately measure training effort. The other killer feature is the ability to share courses, workouts and saved rideswirelessly with other 705 units in range (3 meters). It will make shop rides much more efficient since you won’t need to ensure folks have cue sheets (just these expensive bike toys).

All units (even my old school 305) will work with Garmin’s forthcoming Connect service (which will be a combination of their MotionBased site plus new features).

If I manage to sell enough old tech to get one of the new models (both available in time for Christmas for ~$430.75 USD and $541.65-$709.07 USD) I’ll write up a review.

(You can review the full technical comparison here.)

Technorati Tags: 2007 Cycling Fitness gadget Garmin gps Array

Garmin announced the launch of their new developer web site which provides information on and access to “free and licensed Garmin resources and a library of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), toolkits and web services broken into 4 main categories”:

Device Communications

Start connecting with Garmin devices today — whether you want to send and receive location data directly from your website using the Garmin Communicator Plugin or whether you want to create custom POIs that can be sent to Garmin navigation systems using our Content Toolkit.

Web Services

Access data and utilize core features provided by MotionBased — Garmin’s web-based activity portal. Enable your website to store, manipulate and display Garmin GPS data with little or no development.

Smartphone/PDA Services

Provide mobile applications running on Windows Mobile or Palm OS with access to GPS information, interactive maps and intelligent routing including SMS-based messaging that can be used to transmit position information to supported devices.

Location Based Services

Get Garmin to work for your business solution. Add location-based services to any Java-based mobile phone application and enable fleet tracking, messaging, dispatch and navigation directly on Garmin’s portable navigation devices.

When I get some time to poke around the site, I’ll report back on what you can/cannot do with this new offering from Garmin. On a surface scan, tho, it looks very promising and is a welcome surprise from Garmin.

Technorati Tags: 2007 Garmin gps Programming web services

Montebello Software has released an update to Ascent. 1.6.0 Improvements and Bug Fixes:

• New Feature: added speed, pace, gradient, and cadence zone support; ranges are settable in a new preference pane
• New Feature: paths in the Detailed Map View can now be color-coded by zone
• New Feature: laps can be highlighted in the Detailed Map View
• New Feature: new zone types can be displayed in the Activity View
• New Feature: zone type can be selected in the Activity View Statistics HUD
• Added preference to set “below zone” color for heart rate coloring
• Fixed problem with “last sync time” set incorrectly when tracks synced in an un-registered version of Ascent
• Added “Are you sure?” dialog to “Clear Map Cache…” menu choice
• Fixed bug that caused wrong max heart rate values to be shown in the browser for laps when units were set to metric
• Fixed bug that was causing errors in “Active Time” displays for laps and tracks in the browser
• Fixed problem where browser would show wrong values for certain fields if activity started at a non-zero distance
• Fixed problem where selected activity after sync was not displayed in browser map or stat mini-views

Technorati Tags: 2007 ascent Cycling gps Running software training update