Whereboutz by TeleNav lets you create a social networking travel journal

Whereboutz is a new social networking site from the people behind the popular Telenav navigation software. The site lets you create your own trip journal, filled with maps, geotagged photos, videos and more.

Unlike many other social networking sites, Whereboutz allows you to keep your site private, which means you get to pick the people you share your trip with. Of course, if you prefer to share everything you do, you can also share your updates using Twitter of Facebook. With the iPhone app, you can upload your location, along with photos, videos and voice memos.

The site is free of charge, as is their iPhone app. Best of all, if you sign up, and provide some feedback, you’ll be entered to win a $500 Visa gift card!

So, if you are heading on a trip this summer, and you’d like to keep friends and family updated on your adventures, go sign up for the site and take it for a spin.

TeleNav Shotgun GPS unit offers reviews on-the-go

Something exciting is happening in the world of GPS units (ok, perhaps I am the only one excited by it).

We are slowly seeing a trend heading towards connected GPS devices. A “connected” GPS device is a regular GPS receiver, with built in 2-way communications, and a host of services that can take advantage of being connected.

TeleNav is one of the newest entrants into this market, but anyone with a US mobile phone has probably seen their name pop up a couple of times. After offering their navigation software on mobile phones for several years, they released the Shotgun GPS device last year.

The Shotgun features the TeleNav navigation system in a sleek receiver, along with integrated cellular connectivity.

The initial release of the Shotgun offered Internet searches, online trip planning and instant traffic information. Today, TeleNav announced an update to the unit which enables business reviews and mileage tracking.

The business review feature allows you to read reviews of many points of interest, as well as the ability to add your own review right on the device, and share it with others.

With the business mileage feature, you can assign trips to a client, job or other category, and instantly view and download the information online. The feature even offers the ability to download the mileage information as a PDF of Excel file.

The TeleNav Shotgun costs $299, and monthly service is just $11.99 (or $129/year). The unit comes with a 3 month trial to the online services.

I’m convinced that the future of the GPS unit is “connected”, and anyone with their own navigation unit will understand how frustrating it is when you are trying to find a local point of interest, but run into the limitations of an old and outdated database. When your GPS unit is connected, you always have access to the most up to date information.

We’ll have a full review of the TeleNav Shotgun posted as soon as we can!