Blog it or Facebook it or Tweet it or … – Road trip tip

by Gadling Staff on

Let friends and family share in your road trip adventure by posting details along the way via your blog, Facebook, Twitter or other social media site. People at home are curious about your adventures, and seeing your update may trigger a memory or suggestion they have to improve your trip.

With a smartphone such as the Apple iPhone, Motorola Droid or Research in Motion’s BlackBerry, it’s a snap to post a status update of your trip or take and upload a photo or video of a roadside attraction. Smartphone Facebook apps and apps such as Bloglive make it easy to upload your content.

Of course, don’t do any of this while driving. Wait until you’re stopped, or have a passenger do the posting.

Slacker Personal Radio comes to Android

by Scott Carmichael on

This has been a pretty big week for Android fans. Verizon Wireless became the third US operator to hop on board the Android bandwagon, and did so with not one, but two different Android devices.

The Motorola Droid and the HTC Droid Eris are bother very impressive phones. Of course, a good smartphone becomes a great smartphone when developers create high quality applications for the platform.

One of those apps to be released this week is the Slacker Personal Radio player. It appeared in the Android market on Thursday, and is free of charge.

Using the app is free as well – though if you want to remove ads and add the ability to skip more than 6 tracks an hour, you’ll want to consider upgrading to Slacker Radio Plus (starting at just $3.99/month).

The app mimics the Slacker browser interface nicely, and you get the same favorite/block controls that give you full control over your music preferences.

I found the time to load tracks a bit on the long side, even when on 3G, and unlike on the Blackberry Slacker version, no tracks are cached to the memory card, so you will always need to be in range of WiFi or a cell signal to use Slacker. And, unlike on the iPhone, Slacker runs nicely in the background, and even shows your current track in the Android dropdown notification bar.

Gadling gear review – CoPilot Live for Android phones

by Scott Carmichael on

In this Gadling gear review, I’m going show you CoPilot Live for Android. CoPilot Live is a navigation software package for Android powered phones like the T-Mobile G1 and MyTouch 3G or the upcoming Sprint HERO.

The software turns your Android powered phone into a full navigation system with text to speech, offline maps and traffic information.
The Interface of CoPilot Live is very easy to use, and it makes use of large icons, making it easier to use when you are driving (not that you should be controlling your GPS unit when driving!).

Since the best way to show off an application like this is to show the product in action, I’ve made a bunch of screen shots that show the interface and its various features.

When planning a route, you can select 5 different modes of travel – by car, foot, RV, motorcycle and bike. Each mode will pick a different route, appropriate for the selected transportation method. This means you won’t be routed over the highway if you want to walk to your destination.

Picking a destination can be done by address, point of interest, manually on the map, by intersection, by photo or by coordinates.

The PhotoNav feature is pretty slick – it allows you to pull up a photo and navigate to it. This requires the photo to have geotag locations embedded in it.

Destination entry is quick and simple – CoPilot Live uses its own onscreen keyboard instead of the Android keyboard.

As you type, the database shows locations that match your entry. As soon as you see the one you want, you tap it.

Once you have found your required destination, you can call before navigating to it, which is especially handy if you are just looking for a nearby restaurant or hotel and want to know whether it makes sense to make the drive to it.

Before you actually tell CoPilot Live to start navigating, you can get a quick overview of the route it picked. This is great if you’d like to make modifications to the route it selected, or if you’d like to be 100% sure you picked the right destination.

Once on the road to your destination, you can view the map in several ways – 2D, 3D, “Safety view” (which shows very little distracting information) and itinerary view.

3D maps are vibrant and show just the right amount of local information. You can also increase or reduce what is shown on the map, making it just right for your personal preference.

The “Live” part of CoPilot Live refers to several online services offered within the application. Live Traffic offers real time traffic on your route, or any other location covered by the CoPilot traffic information network.

Live Link allows you to share your current location with other CoPilot Live users, though obviously only those that you have selected.

And finally, Live Weather shows the current and upcoming weather conditions of your destination city, as well as any location on your route.

The CoPilot Live premium services cost $19.95 per year, and include traffic information and fuel prices.

Traffic information can be viewed as a reference, or used in order to recalculate your route, should you come across nasty traffic, detours or accidents.

Final thoughts

It should be obvious from the photos that CoPilot Live is a really impressive application. It offers all the features you’d expect from a high end GPS unit, including text to speech and automatic rerouting, along with up to date maps and an extensive point-of-interest database. And in addition to all this, it also provides online services, making the most of your smartphone.

But by far the best part of CoPilot Live is the price – at just $34.95, it is more than 5 times cheaper than a standard GPS unit. You’ll find it in the Android Market by searching for “CoPilot”.

Getting CoPilot Live on your phone is relatively easy – after purchasing it from the Android Market, you will receive an email from the manufacturer directing you to a download location. This download is for the maps required to use CoPilot Live. By installing the 2GB map package, you’ll be able to use CoPilot even when you are out of range of a cell signal.

CoPilot Live for Android is a no-brainer. Obviously, if you already own a GPS unit, you may not need it, but if you are regularly on the road without one, and you own an Android phone, then it really is worth the low purchase price.

I couldn’t find any downsides to the program, other than an occasional slow performance on my T-Mobile MyTouch 3G. Sadly, some Android phones are delivered with a limited amount of memory, so it can really help to install a task manager to “kill” as many applications as you can before starting CoPilot.

The only other issue is heat – if you have CoPilot running for longer periods of time, your phone will get hot, and you really will need a car charger cord if you plan to use it for more than a couple of hours. Other than that, the application is easy to use, well written and its routing and navigation skills are excellent.

CoPilot Live is also available for Windows Mobile and the iPhone. They also offer a desktop/laptop based version.

Augmented reality: a traveler’s dream?

by Jeremy Kressmann on

Gadling has previously investigated how mobile devices are changing the way we travel, whether it’s helping us navigate public transit, letting you make cheap phone calls abroad or showing us location-based maps of nearby restaurants, hotels and businesses. Now, an emerging mobile phone technology called augmented reality looks ready to bring this mobile experience to the “next level.”

It works like this: you start up an application on your phone using a built-in accelerometer, GPS and camera. As the application scans the world around you, it recognizes what you see, providing images, web links and information depending on where and what you’re looking at. Think of it almost like the real world was “clickable.” You could be walking down the street, pass by a restaurant, and have a link pop-up with a menu and weekly specials. Or in the case of augmented reality applications like acrossair on the iPhone (shown above) it can help you figure out the location of the nearest subway or metro stop. Other applications, like Wikitude and the Dutch service Layar let you browse directories of ATM’s, bars and hotels around you.

As with any cool new technology, there’s sometimes a catch. At this point, augmented reality apps like acrossair, Layar and Wikitude are only available to users abroad in Europe, although the companies are all promising a launch for U.S. users later this year. You’ll also need to have a supported phone – in this case either a device with Android or an iPhone 3GS to take advantage. Still, the coming of augmented reality offers a bright view of our travel future. Imagine taking a trip where we were free of our guidebooks, able to have information on transit, shopping, eating and sleeping at our fingertips when we wanted it and hidden from view when we didn’t. It’s a concept that is rapidly approaching reality, though still working out some kinks – don’t throw out that map just yet.

La Tour Eiffel for Google Android – live webcam views from around the world

by Scott Carmichael on

Regular readers will know that I’m a bit of a Google Android fan. I recently gave you a quick look at Flightstats for Android, but today I’d like to share another application with you. In fact, despite a marketplace offering over 4500 applications, my absolute favorite does nothing more than show live webcam images as the background on my home screen.

But no matter how simple the app may seem, there is something awesome about going to bed at night and seeing a live sunrise in Paris, or waking up to the sunset from the top of the Sears Tower. Images from the webcam sources can be updated every 10, 20, 30 or 60 minutes, and the program supports saving images to your MicroSD memory card.

The application is in the Android marketplace as “La Tour Eiffel” and is free of charge. As for the name? It launched with just one webcam and progressed into the amazing application it is today. In total, the application offers over 30 different views from around the world.