Strap in and brace yourselves all over, kids, because I got a HOT list of deals here for the upcoming Black Friday sales! Seems that Office Max dropped the dime a bit early on what they’ll be offering up for cheap the day after Thanksgiving (early?? It’s not even HALLOWEEN and they’re talking Black Friday!), but their incredibly gauche behavior brings you a whole lot of deals. Check THIS out!
How about an Acer netbook for $150? I know, you’re probably blinking rapidly and reading that again, but it’s true. And it’s not where the deals end…but where they BEGIN, my friends. How about a Compaq Presario AMD Athlon II dual-core CPU for $240? Maybe you like the DVDs…well, you can get a Memorex portable DVD player with seven-inch screen for $30. Start hunting for couch change now and by Thanksgiving you should have enough for even a Magellan RoadMate 1440 GPS. Just $70!
It’s enough to make even the most hesitant shopper think twice about clutching the wallet in a death grip.
GPS devices have become so common place these days you can barely cross an intersection without seeing one mounted to a car’s windshield or a biker’s wrist. The Satsports GPS, though, is like no other on the market today and can provide pertinent information to bikers, skiers, golfers and runners.
For those who frequent the fairway they’ll be able to take advantage of the device’s 700 stored golf courses, providing 2D/3D maps of the fairway as well as yardages to the front, middle and back of the green. It can also guide Tiger Woods wannabes to where the ‘hazards’ lie and even provide information as to what club to choose according to the hole at hand. When the match is complete golfers can sync their collected data with their computer, which should hopefully help lower their handicap.
Skiers will also find the Satsports GPS beyond useful. Not only can it provide a virtualy unlimited amount of ski maps, but it can assist your recovery in the event of an avalanche by providing your exact coordinates. Work up an appetite on the slopes? No problem, stored in the device is a list of restaurants, lodges, bars and more. And much like the golfer’s game, the skier’s runs can be downloaded to their computer and stored for review and comparison.
And like all GPS devices it can track speed (live, average and maximum), distance, time, and altitude (live and variances), making it an ideal choice for the hiker, runner or even walker – heck all types of athletes. Once your activities are complete you can simply upload the data to a map or view it on a Google Earth flyover. Toss in a special $65 SD card and the Satsports can perform turn-by-turn driving directions.
The Satsports GPS will be available at select ski resorts for the price of $490 US, with major retailers to follow soon after.
Processor: Samsung 2440A 400Mhz
Battery: 3.7V Li Ion 1050mAh
OS: Windows CE 5.0
Speaker: 1W internal speaker
Memory: Built in Flash 256MB Samsung SLC RAM – 64MB
Dimensions/Weight: 90 x 55 x 16 mm – 125g
Display: touchscreen LCD – 2.7″, TFT QVGA (320 x 240)
Color: Black & Aluminum
GPS: SiRF Star III Embedded Patch Antenna
Applications: Satski, Pocket Caddy, Satsports Log (running & cycling), MP3 Player, Image Viewer, Video Player
Micro SD
Free silicon case with built in 6hr back up battery
September 29th, 2009 11:21 AM | by Christen da Costa
Well folks, believe it or not, but the wait for the Garmin nuvifone G60 is almost over. On October 4th AT&T Wireless well begin selling the handset for $299 after a 2-year contract signing and $100 mail-in-rebate. Garmin-Asus’ G60 is said to provide the “easiest-to-use location experiences available because it is the only phone to fully integrate the world’s best selling GPS navigator with voice, data and mobile web.” So it’s probably best to think about the G60 as a GPS with an integrated phone, and not the other way around.
The G60 will include a 3 megapixel camera with geo tagging, be preloaded with a ton of POIs, have access to AT&T’s 20,000 WiFi hotspots and come packed with a dashboard and windshield mount. When the G60 is removed from the in car mounts it will automatically…
September 25th, 2009 9:13 AM | by Christen da Costa
At first glance it would appear that TomTom wants to sucker you out of $120 for a car vehicle mount that at best sticks your iPhone to your car’s windshield. Not so.
For $120 you not only get the aforementioned windshield suction cup mount, but a built-in microphone, speaker, stereo audio out, a USB port for charging and get this: built-in GPS for enhanced performance. It’s not clear if the built-in GPS works in tandem with the iPhone’s, but it should provide faster and more efficient fixes on your location in either case.
Unfortunately, and I hate to trample on TomTom’s parade, especially after producing such a polished video (below) for the product, you’ll need to drop an additional $99 for their application, bringing the total price to $220. Would you plunk down this kind of dough when you can buy a stand alone device for the same price if not less?
The current undisputed king of the geeky gadget may well have just been found, folks–brace yourself for the iPhone Arider.
It’s still in the prototype stage, but one day we’ll all be able to enjoy the iPhone Arider. And what does it do, you wonder? Simple–it’s a portable navigation system that feeds to a display in a pair of glasses. It follows your head motion, so if you want to pan the map to the right, you just look right. Pan any other direction and you just look that direction. Even better, it also can be used as a Bluetooth headset, PLUS it will handle Twitter updates.
I couldn’t be happier about this one, folks–I’m eagerly awaiting the day I can buy Spider Jerusalem-style picture taking sunglasses, and every move like this brings me one step closer to my triangle-and-circle.
All right, folks, if you’ve been waiting anxiously to get your hands on the Motorola Cliq, you should be happy to know that they’re looking to start taking orders October 19th.
Seems the company actually released this date in a brochure, which was then photographed and began making the rounds. This handset will feature a touchscreen, and assures connectivity with your devices by both GPS and WiFi radio, and rumors suggest that Android 2.0 will come with the Cliq, so if you weren’t interested before, you might be now.
T-Mobile further threw some confirmation in by saying that they would start delivering product to their stores starting November 2nd. Add this all up and it means, chances are, you’ll be able to get a Cliq right soon.
Considering that NASA’s been whining about not having enough budget for the last couple years, it really makes them look bad to discover what a couple kids from MIT did the other day.
While NASA’s assembling teams have needed millions of dollars to launch one satellite, two guys from MIT put together a satellite of their own and launched it into low Earth orbit. Here’s how they did it:
First, they took a styrofoam beer cooler and filled it with chemical hand warmers (to keep the thing from freezing in space), a cheap camera, and a prepaid phone with GPS so they could find the thing when it was all over. They then inflated a weather balloon with helium and launched their “satellite”. It got so far up that it managed to take a picture of the curvature of the earth.
Talk about your fantastic homemade gadgets–kudos to two schmoes from MIT for making NASA look like a bunch of whiny embezzlers.
Here’s a shocker–apparently,for teenagers, driving and gadgets just plain old don’t mix.
The Brits did a survey and discovered that teenagers are likely to be distracted when they drive, especially by the gadgets in their cars. Sure, the music system knobs were the biggest distractor (even the GPS and the air conditioner played roles in distraction), but there were plenty of other, more unnerving, surprises.
Twenty five percent of drivers aged seventeen to twenty four have texted while driving. Interestingly, only three percent of those drivers thought it was acceptable behavior to do so.
Better yet, sixteen percent have put on makeup while driving.
The Brits, for their part (who are starting to look more like V For Vendetta with every passing day) have declared this a massive failure of government to get its message across. Never mind that what this really should be is a massive failure of parents to make clear rules about what the kids can do in the car.
September 1st, 2009 8:12 PM | by Christen da Costa
Garmin kicked out a new GPS system today called the Edge 500. Designed specifically for cyclists, it weighs just 2 ounces and can track speed, distance, time, GPS position, elevation, temperature, calories burned, climb and descent. For accurate altimeter readings, Garmin has stuffed in a barometric altimeter and like their other devices includes their ANT+ technology for wirelessly transferring data from the device to your computer. Toss on one of Garmin’s speed/cadence sensors as well as heart rate monitor and the Edge 500 can keep even closer tabs on your workouts.
The Edge 500’s battery is good for up to 18 hours on a single charge and comes bundled with a low-profile, quarter-turn mount that attaches to any pair of handle bars. You can expect it to arrive this fall and start at $249.99 – add $100 for a bundled heart rate monitor and speed/cadence sensor.
By now well aware of the perils of losing a child thanks to shows such as Nancy Grace. Well, hopefully no more will that tail make headlines thanks to the Amber Alert GPS 2G.
It’s a small GPS infused tracker that you attach to your child and simply by sending the text message “WHERE” to the device will provide the child’s location. Parents can even set it to show a ‘bread crumb’ of their child’s movement as well as set a safety zone, voice monitoring, temperature alert, destination reached notification and the ability to monitor the speed of a vehicle the child is riding in. If the child finds themselves in an unsavory situation they can hit a special button to alert their parents.
Much like the NuM8 that we saw this year – they offer a comparable feature set but in a watch format – the Amber Alert GPS 2G requires a $10/month subscription and an initial investment of $379.99.
