Every time you fly in a commercial jet plane, a blackbox records everything the plane does. In case of an accident, recovering this blackbox lets authorities determine what the plane was doing up to the time of the accident.
With the DRS 1100 you can add similar blackbox features to your car. The DRS 1100 consists of a video recorder with a Secure Digital (SD) card reader (and an included 4GB SD card), a mounting bracket, and a lengthy power cord for plugging the unit into a cigarette lighter. …Continue reading: Car Blackbox DRS-1100 Car Video Recorder Review
If the prospect of spending north of $200 on a GPS add on (aka TomTom) for your iPhone or iPod touch has you little shaken fear not, for there is a semi-reasonable solution. Arriving in stores later this month is the Dual Electronics XGPS300 GPS Cradle for the iPod Touch.
For $179.99 it not only adds GPS to your iPod Touch but includes NavAtlas’ turn-by-turn navigation app, a rechargeable battery, speaker, audio out, mini USB port and windshield cradle. The app itself is free and available at the iTunes app store. But before all you cheap skates rush off to download it, note that the application works exclusively with Dual Electronics’ cradle.
Or you could just hope and pray that Google releases their free nav app to the iPhone and some how Apple approves it.
Remember how yesterday we were talking about tracking your children with a simple USB device from Insignia? Well, apparently, the child tracker phenomenon is really taking off because another device has stepped up to challenge, the ET3500 GPS Tracking Bracelet.
It’s a bracelet that attaches to a child’s wrist–or anyone else’s, for that matter–and allows you to track at virtually any time where exactly the bracelet is. It comes with an emergency alarm system, an emergency two way radio, journey logging up to one hundred thousand locations, and plenty more.
Basically, you can preset a route and see, at a glance, whether or not the route is being followed. The bracelet will even point out the route for the wearer, showing them exactly where to go, stop, turn and not to go, stop, or turn on a handy LCD display.
Great for parents, a nightmare for civil rights groups, it’s the kind of thing that’s a bit tougher to misuse as it generally requires the wearer actually WEAR the thing, but still–one quick toss in an open car window and you know exactly where the car is at all times.
Here’s a device that makes Big Brother look a lot more fun and accessible–the Driving Reporter Gadget.
It’s a USB device that’s also an in-car 16 channel GPS system that stores about 100 hours of your driving. All the data, all the activities are routed into this thing so you know exactly where you were, where you turned, and where you went. Not to mention your speed getting there. It’s a lot like the black box on an airplane, just for your car. Okay, granted, the Driving Reporter Gadget is also black in color, but that’s just a funny coincidence.
The device runs on a pair of AAA lithium batteries, and secures anywhere on your car via an attached magnet (doubly odd since this seems to at least have some limited memory right next to a magnet as part of the design.), and you can even watch your trip on Google Earth, which is awesome if you have a tendency to get lost and want to watch your own highlight reel to figure out how you got so abjectly butt-lost in the first place.
I’m a bit concerned about having a device tattle on you constantly, but for parents this may be a godsend. They cost $229.95 each, so finding out where your car’s been is pretty easy.
Many an Android device might soon have access to Google’s free map application, Navigation, but for those of you that can’t hold out until early November there is always the Garmin nüvifone G60 GPS Phone for AT&T. During the initial launch AT&T was asking as much as $300 for the handset. Now Amazon has it for a mere $99.99 (2 year contract required), which begs the question: is the Nuvifone G60 not selling well and how long will the GPS maker stay in the game? After all, the company just lost (the grammar police got me!) $1.2 billion from their market cap after Google announced their own FREE GPS app.
Sears, determined not to be shown up by OfficeMax, has just announced its own Black Friday deals, and they’re actually pretty awesome. Even better, they’re actually pushing Black Friday ahead to HALLOWEEN. That’s right, the deals start THIS SATURDAY, as opposed to Black Friday.
What’s on tap? Well, how about a Magellan RoadMate 1200 GPS system for $99.99, or maybe a Sony 1000-Watt 5-Disc home theater system with a 1080p upscaling HDMI DVD player for $249.99?
But that’s not where the deals end over at Sears, only where they begin. There’s also a whole slew of deals on televisions and digital cameras and everything in between. Sears is clearly desperate for a sale, and is doing everything short of giving it away to get their deal. I don’t think I’m exaggerating that “desperate”, either: when you start offering Black Friday deals in October, and especially given the financial condition of Sears, it’s not too much of a surprise that they’re pulling out all the stops.
It’s…um…about ten thirty AM. Do you know where your children are?
If you can’t answer yes to that, and even if you can, you may still want to get your hands on a Little Buddy Child Tracker from Insignia.
The Little Buddy Child Tracker does pretty much what it says on the box, and it tracks your children. Relentlessly. Like non stop. You can get the location of the unit at pretty much any time from your cell phone.
Yes, it’s a homing device. For children. Now, you may want to start getting cranked up about how children aren’t branded cattle to be tracked relentlessly, though you’d probably love to have this on hand if something happened to Junior. My concern, however, comes into play in the “misuse” category. Like instead of, say, tracking Junior someone decides to track Tammy Stalkerbait down the street by slipping it in her car.
Are we as a society ready for tracking devices? I’m not sure. But we’ll find out if you can shell out a hundred bucks for your very own Little Buddy Child Tracker.
Wow, just wow. Not even 24 hours has gone by and the Google Maps with turn-by-turn directions for Android devices rumor has become official. As suspected this will be a free app and will be available when Android 2.0 launches sometime next month.
The feature set is robust to say the least and will easily rival, if not eclipse previous GPS applications and even some stand alone GPS devices. My favorite is that ability to view ’street view’ before the turn such that you can view landmarks before you change direction. Much like most stand alone GPS devices, Google Maps Navigation offers voice guidance, turn-by-turn directions, 3D view and the ability to search by point of interest instead of just address. And they’ve also added Google Voice Search. There a few vids of the app after the ‘leap’, so be sure to check those out.
Right now the app is advert free, but given Google’s model I’d expect them to start plugging those in as we move closer to a nonbeta version. So for instance, you’re taking a trip to San Francisco from LA. You might see ads for food stops, gas stations and such. More local routes might show you coffee shops or stores that relate to your previous search history, and so forth.
GPS has come along way in the last 10 years, so it’s really no surprise to see unorthodox products start to emerge around the technology. Enter the GPS Navigation Helmet. Instead of announcing your turn-by-turn directions, clips attached to each ear lobe tug on the corresponding ear to convey left or right. While the technology is far from practical for the everyday communicator, the implications for the visually impaired are most certainly interesting.
Today rumors emerged that Google is in the process of developing their very own navigation app for smartphones running the Android OS. It’s not clear if the application would be more robust than the iPhone’s current Google Map application and offer turn-by-turn directions, but given that they own the Android OS, and can essentially do whatever they want, it’s more likely than not.
Providing greater credence to the rumor is that Google just discontinued their relationship with Tele Atlas earlier this October, which charged Google for use of their map info – Google has a contract with them until 2013 to work on International maps. The break away from the map service provider indicates that Google has amassed enough map data over the years to go at it alone and in all likelihood offer an ad supported free version. …Continue reading: Gadget Rumor: Google Maps With Turn-By-Turn Navigation Might Be Heading To Android Devices
