Enter to win a free Tom Tom ONE GPS unit!

by Grant Martin on

Did that review of the Tom Tom XL330s get you all envious that you don’t have a GPS for this summer’s road trip? Well you’re in luck! In addition to the other the XL330s sent over to the Gadling offices, our friends at Tom Tom sent us an extra Tom Tom ONE 3rd edition to give away to one lucky winner!

Chocked with features like turn-by-turn directions, millions of points of interest and a clean simple interface, the third edition ONE is the best selling GPS on the market.

And it can be yours. Just leave an entry telling us how you learn your way around a city you’re visiting in the comments below and we’ll draw a lucky winner by next Tuesday, July 15th.

Good luck!

  • To enter, simply leave a comment below telling us how you learn your way around a city you’re visiting.
  • The comment must be left before Tuesday, July 15th, 2008 at 5PM Eastern Time.
  • You may enter only once.
  • One winner will be selected in a random drawing.
  • One Grand Prize Winner will receive a free Tom Tom ONE, Third Edition
  • Open to legal residents of the 50 United States, the District of Columbia and Canada (excluding Quebec) who are 18 and older.
  • GPS is valued at $199.00.
  • Click Here for complete Official Rules.

Gadling Gear: A review of the TomTom XL330S

by Grant Martin on

TomTom just released their new XL330S model, and this lucky blogger was able to get his hands on one for a test drive.

I’ll preface this article with the following disclaimer: I’ve never been fond of automotive GPS units. I think that while useful to many drivers, they can also have the adverse effect of preventing the driver from learning routes, a city’s layout and beautiful niches of the city that go unnoticed unless you’re really focused on the outside.

But I agreed to do this review, partially because I wanted to disprove this theory to myself and partially because these new TomToms are just so damn cool.

Despite my unit being programmed in Estonian when it came from the TomTom PR factory, it was fairly simple to boot up and configure. It asked me to set up my preferences, including style of map, voices and other tidbits, then immediately dumped me into a map showing my location under an arrow. All I had to do to power the unit was plug it into the cigarette lighter with the supplied cable. Similarly, hooking the unit up to my computer used the same mini USB jack and didn’t need any drivers.

Being a chronic avoider of instruction manuals, I figured I would first just wing the programming of my office into the system – and I was right, navigating was easy. Tap the map with your finger, tap “navigate to”, select your city, then punch in your the street and number. It’s a completely linear interface that cuts down on superfluous buttons and options and is incredibly easy to use.
You can get traffic data with the XL330S as well, although it’s a service that you have to subscribe to online.

Naturally, I decided to download some customized voices to give me directions. After a quick look at the pay-per downloads on the TomTom website, I googled “TomTom voice downloads” and found a database of free content, including Sean Connery, Patrick Steward (from Star Trek, The Next Generation, John Cleese (of Monty Python fame) and Dr. Evil. Installing the voices was as easy as plugging in the unit to my laptop then dragging sound files over to the voice directory.

This would later haunt me on a train between Providence and Boston, where I booted up the GPS to check our location and was greeted with Captain Picard from the Enterprise shouting “YOU HAVE REACHED YOUR DESTINATION, INITIATE DOCKING PROCEDURE.” Awkward. I should also point out that if you want a celebrity voice, you’re not going to be able to get them to pronounce the street names (text-to-speech), so it may not be worth your time.

House hunting with my girlfriend in Boston this weekend, I put the XL330s (the “s” stands for text-to speech capability) to it’s first real test. The first thing I did with my new demonstration TomTom was drop it four feet onto an asphalt surface. Durability? Check. Still running.

At the time, I was late for my train, we were in Cambridge and we needed to get to the South Station quickly. I tapped “navigate to” + “points of interest” in the railway section, and scrolled down for “South Station”. Not there. Luckily we had a map that showed the intersections of the streets, so I plugged in “Atlantic” and “Summer” streets and the TomTom calculated our journey there.

As I would soon find out, however, much of Boston’s highway system is underground where satellite signals can’t reach. So while the TomTom could lead us towards the Big Dig, we were blind while underground. Furthermore, it takes a few moments to acquire a signal once you’re above ground, so if you exit quickly and need to make a quick turn, you don’t get directions for 20 or 30 seconds.

This isn’t a problem with TomTom though; until they create satellite signals that can penetrate through 40 feet of soil and cement, all GPS units will lose signal underground.

For what it’s worth, navigation in my home town of Ann Arbor has been fluid and easy, although I spend a surprising amount of brainpower on the device. I’ve never been a great multi tasker, so when the GPS is babbling, a friend is in the car and NPR is on the radio, two of the three are going to get tuned out.

Overall? I think it’s a nifty, well-designed little device. I like its battery life, slim design and ability to call streets out to me on the road. I also like how simple both the hardware and software are – easy enough for your grandmother to use but with enough options to make a metallurgical engineer think. Would I buy one? If I was in the market for a GPS, sure thing. But I’m going to stick to my analog maps for now.

Check out TomTom’s product website for full specifications and purchasing options.

Gadling’s guide to GPS and location based services

by Jeremy Kressmann on

Traveling for me evokes memories of ancient explorers, navigating across vast oceans with only a sextant and the light of the stars and moon. Or the arduous journey of Lewis and Clark as they mapped a slow path across the great wilderness of the Louisiana Purchase. We’ve certainly come a long way since then in terms of navigation – in fact the now-ubiquitous availability of handheld GPS units and Google Maps has made finding your way around in unknown places a cinch.

But in fact, GPS and Google Maps is only the beginning. As we saw with yesterday’s new 3G iPhone with built-in GPS, we’re in the midst of a new era of “location aware devices.” This includes everything from from cameras with geotagging to “location-aware” mobile phones which promise to revolutionize the way we travel and gather information for our trips. Follow along and we’ll take you through Gadling’s guide to GPS and location based services.

Mobile Phones and Location Based Services
A whole range of mobile devices are now on the market that can pinpoint your exact location. Companies like Blackberry, Nokia, Motorola and Apple all make devices which can access this information over the network. This has enabled a huge range of new ways to use your phone, from getting turn-by-turn driving directions to more advanced applications that combine the power of social networks with your location. Services like Where and Socialight not only know where you are, they also let you access location-specific “tags” left by other users in popular locations. Want to know the best place to grab a drink when most bars close at 11pm in London? Find the closest late-night pub by subscribing to Socialight’s “Late London” channel. Looking for a place to cool off this summer in the Northeast United States? Check out the “Swimming holes” group. Drank too much coffee this morning? Better get MizPee. The best part of all this is that the recommendations are based on your location, so you can find the most interesting/useful spots closest to you relatively quickly – no guidebook required.


Geotagging and Photography
Not only does your mobile phone know where you are, your camera is also getting in on the act too. Tools like this Sony GPS unit let you add location data to your snapshots, providing a whole new dimension to your digital scrapbook. Perhaps you’re trying to track down that street in Austin where you took a photo of the great Mexican restaurant? Not a problem, just check out the location data embedded in your image and the next time you’re there, you can swing by for a few tacos. Even popular photo-sharing site Flickr has gotten in on the trend, allowing you to view maps of destinations with popular photos pinpointed to where they were taken. Interestingly enough, there are now even cameras on the market that have built-in GPS capabiltiies.

GPS Just for Fun
In addition to GPS-equipped phones and cameras, there are also plenty of other ways you can use GPS devices just for goofing around. Sony’s popular PlayStation Portable offers a GPS add-on, allowing you to access location data for some of your favorite games like Metal Gear Solid to unlock special bonus characters. And you’ve probably heard by now about the artwork people have been creating using GPS software. Even though the recent DHL piece proved to be a hoax, other copycats have already followed suit. Of course, no article about GPS would be complete without a mention of everyone’s favorite GPS activity, geocaching. If you want to take it step further, you might even use GPS to create a life-size game of Pac-Man for yourself. The possibilities are pretty endless.

Not only do these new location-aware devices services provide us with useful information, they promise to change the way we travel. We are no longer tied to the recommendations of guidebooks. We can call upon user-created information about places to make informed decisions about what to see and where to go. We can take a look at a tiny street in a far-away land, without ever having to step foot there. Or we can use these new services for just plain fun. As location-based devices and services become cheaper and more widespread, they can only serve to help us make more informed travel decisions in the future.

A portrait of global proportions

by Anna Brones on

Drawing to scale can be hard enough, I can’t even imagine attempting to draw on the whole globe. But that’s exactly what artist Erik Nordenankar did. On March 17, 2008 Nordenankar sent a briefcase containing a GPS tracking device with the global shipping company DHL. He gave the company exact instructions on where to go and in what order, and 55 days later the briefcase came back to its departure point, Stockholm. Using the information from the GPS, Nordenankar created the above image. The continuous line of the drawing is exactly 110,664 kilometers long. Now that’s one big portrait.

Update: Yes, this is a hoax. ‘Biggest drawing in world’ revealed as hoax — thanks to everyone who sent this in. –Ed.

Tracks4Africa puts a continent at your fingertips

by Jeremy Kressmann on

A trip to Africa requires some serious preparation. Guidebooks. Vaccinations. Maps. Tourist visas. Mosquito nets. Hiring guides. For many people, the very idea of the African continent conjures images of huge steamer trunks, pith helmets and mountains of travel gear. But for the technology-inclined, the mysterious continent author Paul Theroux once dubbed “the dark star” is becoming just a little bit more accessible, thanks to Tracks4Africa.

Essentially a giant community mapping project, Tracks4Africa is a non-profit organization that maintains user-generated GPS maps of some of the more remote and “eco-sensitive” areas of Africa. Although the project originally started as a way for outdoor enthusiasts to preserve some of Africa’s most unique plant and animal life, it has since blossomed into a full blown database of “off the beaten path” sights in Africa. More than 1,400 adventure travelers have contributed data on everything from recent elephant attacks to ghost towns and covered countries ranging from Ethiopia to Mozambique. And because it’s entirely user-created, there’s a good chance users will also have access to the most current information on the ground. Take this in contrast to an Africa guidebook from Lonely Planet, which might not get updated for several years (if at all).

All you need to get started with Tracks4Africa is a compatible GPS unit and a sense of adventure. Armchair adventurers take heart – the Tracks4Africa database is also viewable through Google Earth. Now get out there and find me a nice date plantation to check out in Namibia.