SatNav Shoes: Navigate the City on Foot

Navigating the city on foot can be tricky, sure an iPhone may help but who wants to walk around with a shiny new phone in your hand just waiting to be stolen? How about a pair of shoes with GPS built in, complete with step by step guidance. The left shoe holds all the gadgetry: under the tongue you will find the control unit. Just enter your starting and destination postcodes and you're off.

There are two ways Sat Nav Shoes give you directions. An LED DNav Bubble on the front acts as a visual guide and you’ll hear a beep when you are heading in the wrong direction. The heel of the shoe is equipped with waterproof speakers or for those with wireless headsets, bluetooth.

It doesn't look like the shoes will track your trip (that would be a feature that would be like to see) but we still think its a great idea.

You can buy them now via Firebox.com for £129 - there is no word on availability beyond the UK at the moment.

Sony’s CyberShot DSC-HX1 with 'Sweep Panorama' Technology

Many cameras now come with a built in panorama mode that allows you to automatically stitch images together. Sony’s CyberShot DSC-HX1 with 'Sweep Panorama' Technology takes this a step further by allowing you to simply 'Sweep' the camera across a scene for an automatically stitched image. The camera will stitch up to up to a maximum 224-degree view horizontal or 154-degree vertical with an end image coming in at 7152 x 1080 pixels.

The clip below details the camera in action:



While interesting we would place this one in the 'gimmick' category, stitching software has advanced considerably in recent years and now any digital camera or indeed camera phone is capable of creating hand held panoramas at a higher resolution.

That said, perhaps it would be nice to have for capturing high rise buildings or urban landscapes on the fly.

Picked up via slashgear.com

iPhone in the City: Navizon - Location and Buddy Tracker

The iPhone's location finder is interesting, lacking the accuracy of the Nokia N95's dedicated GPS unit yet able to provide a fix in under 10 seconds, it is arguably more useful than a standard satellite navigation system.

Our N95 was let down by a slow fix time, leaving us looking slightly foolish when friends asked where we were, only to pull out the latest gadget which five minutes later was still trying to access satellites. The iPhone on the other hand provides an almost instant location via triangulation of phone mast signals and known wifi points.

Accuracy is limited but it works and provides a quick and easy way to orientate yourself in the city, and now thanks to Navizon you can track your friends as well. Navizon is an application that builds on the iPhones 'locate me' feature, it tracks both your and any friends location every 10 seconds issuing you with an alert when they come into a predefined range.


You can add your friends to your Buddy list with a click of a button and then simply click on "Buddies" to see where they are on a map. Your friend will receive an notification with a link to click on and you will be able to see each other's location.

The YouTube movie embedded below provides a walkthough of Navizon:




This is the first example we have seen of near real-time location tracking of people on a consumer device. It is perhaps a landmark moment in geo-software and an indication of the route ahead as we are all becoming increasingly 'geo-located'.

There is a free trial available and more details from http://www.navizon.com

Introducing the Garmin nuvifone (Movies)

Garmin's touch screen GPS phone is an intriguing prospect as its being marketed as a'travel assistant'. In our previous post on Garmin nuvifone - A Phone for Neogeographers? we speculated that the ability to geo-tag information live from the phone could make this a 'must have' gadget and make us hold off that iPhone purchase for a while longer.

Garmin have released two videos on YouTube that provide a closer look at the phones features. The second of the two is well worth a look as it provides an overview of the location aware applications:

Meet the nuvifone:



Scenarios:



The movies are almost cringe worthy 'marketing' fodder but the phone does seem to deliver...

Time will tell when its released third quarter of 2008.

Picked up via the ever essential Engadget.

Garmin nuvifone - A Phone for Neogeographers?

Garmin is the market leader in GPS devices, its GPS based hardware is well respected in the industry and now they are entering the mobile phone market.

The 'Nuvifone' seems to take on the iPhone with its touch screen navigation and adds the all important GPS capability.

Garmin view the phone as 'the ultimate multi-tasker’ and the “first of its kind to integrate premium 3.5G mobile phone capability with an internet browser, data connectivity, personal messaging, and personal navigation functions in one device.”

The Nokia N95 was the first to mass market GPS with its built in functionality but with a slow fix time and a slightly 'clunky' interface it has fallen out of favour, at least with us, as it is too cumbersome to use.

Of note is the built in ability to geotag images and upload to services such as Flickr via either 3G or Wifi.

With the respected name of Garmin behind the phone we are expecting good things from the GPS - this could be the ultimate Neogeographers phone?

Release is due in the third quarter of 2008, full details can be found via the Garmin page.