It’s no secret that people who need to get from point A to point B aren’t always driving a car, so GPS marker Garmin is finally coming out with pedestrian-friendly GPS units in the form of its new nüvi 1200 and nüvi 1300 series. The new units will feature a slim form factor designed to be affordable and useful both in a car and on foot. Optional CityXplorer maps will be available for selected tourist destinations in the U.S. and Europe for folks getting around on foot—and the optional maps can be downloaded directly to the GPS devices.
Tag Archive: Alaska
LG Recalls 30,000 Phones Due to Poor 911 Capability
Electronics maker LG, in conjunction with th Consumer Product Safety Commission, has issued a recall for 30,000 LG 830 Spyder mobile phones due to poor voice quality on calls to 911 emergency services and difficulties maintaining phone connections. The recalled phones have software versions T83LGV03 and T83LGV04; users can check the software version on their phone by selecting “Phone Information” from the handset’s Settings menu.
Impacted users can get a free software upgrade from their wireless carrier or LG Electronics MobileComm to resolve the problem. The handsets were sold from September through November 2008 at a number of retail outlets in the northwest and southeastern United States (Alaska, Idaho, Washington, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, and Puerto Rico) via a number of regional wireless carriers.
Gov. Palin’s E-Mail Hacked
It was really just a matter of time. Since the speculation broke that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, currently running for vice president on the Republican ticket, might be using a private Yahoo account for state business, it was a certainly that someone would hack into that account.
In the event it was a group called the Anonymous, which has had prior tangles with the Church of Scientology. Using a proxy service they found their way into the Governor’s account, and published five screenshots, an address book and two digital pictures of Palin’s family on the Wikileaks site, known for its regular whistle-blowing.
Verizon, AT&T Dominate 700 MHz Auction
Verizon and AT&T were the big winners in the FCC’s much-watched 700 MHz wireless spectrum auction (PDF), bidding more than $16 billion to control vast swathes of the soon-to-be-available spectrum that may be the United States best hope for nationwide wireless broadband services. The auction comprised a total of 1,099 licenses, including both nationwide blocks and many regional licenses.
Verizon Wireless won the largest nationwide C spectrum block, bidding $4.74 billion to narrowly outbid Internet titan Google, which bid $4.71 billion for the same block. Verizon also scored 25 regional licenses within the 700 MHz band, enabling it to roll out or sub-license services in those regions. Verizon now has licenses to 700 MHz services throughout the United States, save for Alaska, Puerto Rico, and the Gulf of Mexico.
Magellan Intros New Entry-level GPS Models
GPS maker Magellan has taken advantage of CES to bring in five new models in its entry-level range, including a widescreen version with a 4.3” screenthat’s set to retail at $229. Its RoadMate 1400 series is aimed at those new to GPS, but come well equipped. Even the base model, the 1400, comes with maps of the Continental UnitedStates, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, plus 1.3 million essential points of interest, such as gas stations, ATMs, and airports with contact details such as location, phone number and travel distance. Moving up, the 1412 adds maps for Canada and Alaska; text-to-speech announcements of street names; and points of interest totalling more than 6 million, including retail, dining, health service andother local business information, while the 1430 includes real-time traffic update information to display traffic incidents along the driver’s route, suggests alternative routes when "fastesttime" to destination is selected, and recalculates the expected arrival time based on the monitored traffic. The 1200 series is smaller, but offers similar features. "We’redeveloping products at Magellan that are designed to exceed consumer expectations in price, content and connectivity. The RoadMate brand is an exceptional example of a value-priced line that deliversgreat GPS performance, unique and compelling features at an introductory price," said Christian Bubenheim, vice president of product marketing, for Magellan.
Alaska Airlines Goes For In-Flight Internet
Alaska Airlines has announced plans to deploy in-flight Internet connectivity using a combination of in-cabin Wi-Fi hotspots and a ku-band satellite system from Row 44. The first test airplane will be a Boeing 737 due to be operation in “spring 2008,” and—assuming all goes well—roll out the technology to the carrier’s 114-plane fleet by the end of 2009.
“Bringing broadband Internet access to the skies is one of the most important things we can do to enhance the experience of both business and leisure customers,” said Alaska’s vp of sales Steve Jarvis, in a statement. “We’re moving ahead with testing, and ultimately plan to bring wireless broadband to our whole fleet.”
DirecTV Sat-Go Takes Satellite TV With You
If there’s one thought that’s crossed the mind of most satellite TV owners—besides “where is that darn remote?”—it could be this: since the satellite signal the system receives is available almost everywhere, why is my television stuck in the living room? Shouldn’t I be able to tap in wherever I go?”
Mio Delivers Entry Level GPS Device
Personal GPS navigation device supplier Mio Technology is at it again with a new entry level GPS device. The Mio DigiWalker C220 is priced at around $250 and should be available now.
The Mio DigiWalker C220, which is a follow up to Mio’s self proclaimed popular DigiWalker C310x, is noted by the company as coming equipped with more than 3.5 million points of interest and offering a stylish look. This GPS unit comes with U.S. maps (Alaska and Hawaii included) preloaded on an SD card and offers general features like turn-by-turn voice and text navigation to help guide a driver to his destination.
Guide to Flickr Tools
The Internet is replete with sites and services offering to let you organize, manage, and share your digital photographs and Yahoo’s Flickr remains anundisputed leader in the field. Partly, that’s because Flicker offers easy-to-use features and boasts and enormous, active, and tremendously engaged user community. But it’s also because Flickr hashad the foresight to let third-party developers build their own add-ons and supplementary services using Flickr’s data and images. Geeks, programmers, and photo buffs have embraced Flickr’s open APIsenthusiastically, so even if Flickr doesn’t offer a feature you want—or its features aren’t up to your task—odds are good a third-party solution already exists to solve the problem foryou. So, if you’re using Flickr and wondering how you can get more out of it, here’s a quick introduction to some tools and services—from the cool to the geeky—which can expand yourFlickr universe: Slickr
One of the best things about Flickr is its user community, who have uploaded untold millions of photos tothe site for the whole world to explore and comment upon. But to truly admire those images, you kinda want to set up a cool high-res slide show, don’t you? The problem, of course, is that Flickr’sown slide show is weak and doesn’t let you take even high-res images full screen—and what if you’re offline? If you’re running Windows 2000/XP, consider Gabriel Handford’s Slickr, a combination Flickr-downloader and full-screen slideshow application. Just point Slickr at a group of photos you want to download (say, images you’vemarked as your favorites) and Slickr will pull down the high-resolution versions of the photos. Slickr’s screen saver/full-screen slideshow can display images by tags, users, groups, or just use theimages you have stored locally; it uses OpenGL graphics to zoom and fade between images in a way which is really, well, slick. (Slickr is Windows-only: if you’re using a Mac orLinux—or just want to download Flickr images for an existing screensaver or slideshow application—maybe check out Magnus von Koeller’s Java-based FlickrFaves image downloader.) Before using any utility which can download images from Flickr, check the licenses on the images you want todownload—some authors are fine with you downloading the photo for your own use, but others may not be. Website FlickrStorm
Speaking of the millions of great images available via Flickr…how do you find them? Flickr has a searchfeature which wins points for being straightforward, but it’s very literal and offers only a few ways to constrain a search—your own photos, groups, and locations being the most useful. Not tofear: zoo-m.com’s FlickrStorm offers a not only a literal search through Flickr’s enormous image database, but also looks for more than whatyou enter, making it easier to find images that are related to (and perhaps more relevant!) than that strict search. FlickrStorm lets you quickly refine your search with terms related to your initialsearch, constrain your search to photos available by particular license type, and (of course) lets you jump to any of the found images on the Flickr site—but wait, there’s more! FlickrStormkeeps track of your image viewing history so you can go back to images you previously viewed, and enables you to drop photos in a tray so you can download selected images; you can also link back toyour tray in the future to see or download your images. FlickrStorm is a great example of offering great functionality without adding great complication. Website Tabblo
One of the great things about Flickr is that it presents every member’s photos the same way, implicitly putting themost amateur snapper on the same level as the professionals. And, yep, one of the bad things about Flickr is that it presents every member’s photos the same way! Users can’t dress up theappearance of their sets to commemorate a special event, play off a theme, or make their images stand out from the crowd. Enter Tabblo, a site which can pullphotos from your Flickr photo sets and dress them up in a variety of customizable templates. Tabblo can import images directly from Flickr (saving you the trouble of uploading them to yet anotherphoto site) and gives your photos a permanent URL and privacy protection. Tabblo makes its money by offering its users printed posters, postcards, and (soon) books: printed material is, of course,something you have to pay for, but it’s free to create as many online tabblos as you like. Website SmartSetr
If youmanage any volume of photos via Flickr, you’ve probably tapped into its set-making capabilities, enabling you to create groups of related photographs. Then, maybe ten minutes later, you probablynoticed how annoying Flickr’s manual process of maintaining and adding photos can get. Eric Appel’s SmartSetr offers the ability to create and setsorganized around criteria you enter, and—even better—update those sets for you automatically. You just enter the tags, dates, descriptive text, privacy level, or even the"interestingness" of the photos you want grouped in a set, and SmartSetr does the rest, automatically creating Flickr sets based on your criteria. When you add new photos matching yourSmartSetr criteria, those photos are automatically added to your sets. Eric has committed to updating all SmartSetr sets at least once per day—but you can trigger a refresh manually—andSmartSetr has added the capability to limit the number of photos in a SmartSet can contain, making it simple to create sets of your Top 10 most interesting photos, or the 25 most recent photos ofyour cat. Although you can change the primary photo and reorder SmartSets using Flickr, it’s important to remember that SmartSets should be managed by SmartSetr, or confusion may ensue. Website Rich Text
One of the most common complaints I hear about Flickr is "why can’t I use formatting in my text?" Well,Flickr does enable users to include formatting in their text…it just requires users to do all the markup themselves. Fortunately, if you run Firefox (or another Mozilla browser like Flock), you can get rich text editing tools for Flickr using Jason Rhyley’s Rich Edit script in conjunction with the GreaseMonkey Firefox extension. Install Rich Edit and you can format your Flickr text with links, bold, italics, and quotes to your heart’s content withoutworrying about markup. (Sorry, IE users, you don’t get to play.) (Extra tip: If you’re already into both Flickr and GreaseMonkey, also check out "Steeev’s" Flickr Multi Group Sender which lets you very quickly put images into multiple Flickr groups, bypassing Flickr’s own oh-so-slow group adding feature.)





