Slashdot Mirror

A comparison of all the mapping software on the iphone, including TomTom and GoogleMaps.

texting while driving is a stupid idea, and if you're speeding, maybe you want to get to the 24hour WallMart before it closes. so why don't you just have a sat nav device with traffic updates? a

almost all the sat nav systems i've seen and used in UK and Germany have an ability to update GPS locations of various Points Of Interest (POI) - be they specific supermarkets, petrol stations (maybe you run on gas, not petrol or diesel), low bridges, or indeed speed camera locations.

currently for UK and other european drivers, there are several sites that offer regularly updated, user-generated, GPS locations of fixed speed cameras, mobile cameras, red-light traffic light cameras etc... Only because I use it, do i mention: http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/

it's got a big userbase of PocketPC and sat nav users, and exactly as mentioned above, they help eliminate false positives through multiple confirmed sitings. However, their speed camera database does cost money - £19 GBP per year (about $4,000 USD). More details on UK camera info: http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/modules.php?name=Cameras

drivers should be concentrating on the road and in their mirrors, not reading text messages on their little mobile screen.

texting while driving is a stupid idea, and if you're speeding, maybe you want to get to the 24hour WallMart before it closes. so why don't you just have a sat nav device with traffic updates? a

almost all the sat nav systems i've seen and used in UK and Germany have an ability to update GPS locations of various Points Of Interest (POI) - be they specific supermarkets, petrol stations (maybe you run on gas, not petrol or diesel), low bridges, or indeed speed camera locations.

currently for UK and other european drivers, there are several sites that offer regularly updated, user-generated, GPS locations of fixed speed cameras, mobile cameras, red-light traffic light cameras etc... Only because I use it, do i mention: http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/

it's got a big userbase of PocketPC and sat nav users, and exactly as mentioned above, they help eliminate false positives through multiple confirmed sitings. However, their speed camera database does cost money - £19 GBP per year (about $4,000 USD). More details on UK camera info: http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/modules.php?name=Cameras

drivers should be concentrating on the road and in their mirrors, not reading text messages on their little mobile screen.

My satnav (Tomtom running on a Windows Mobile PDA) can be updated to include speed camera and other information from http://www.pocketgpsworld.com./

I think that's a lot safer because in this part of the world you can be penalised quite severely for touching your mobile phone while driving. Additionally the gps has a much more accurate idea of my position and is aware of my actual speed and the limit in force on my particular stretch of road.

The databases I use are - static speed cameras, regular locations of mobile speed cameras, average speed cameras, and stoplight cameras. Each type of threat is alerted by a different sound effect and a visual reminder of the speed limit.

I feel that using SMS is a solution to a problem which doesn't exist, especially since phones are increasingly coming with built-in gps receivers.

Yes, you're correct. It is called SDIO. Here's a review for one for PocketPC.

Never used one, but this is the first thing I thought of when I heard of this. Obviously it requires the Hardware, and OS supports SDIO for communication.

the simple fact is that most people don't watch videos on their PDAs. All treos (650 and later) have MP3 and/or video programs built in. If not, go download some freeware.

Core Media Player (TCMP) for PalmOS Supports: AVI (*.avi), Matroska (*.mkv, *.mka), MP4 (*.mp4, *.m4a), Ogg Media (*.ogg, *.ogm), ASF (*.asf), Mpeg 1 Layer III, Ogg Vorbis, Musepack, AC-3, AMR, Adpcm, uLaw, DivX, XviD, MPEG4-SP (plus B-frame support), MPEG1, M-JPEG. And

Palms support, and have supported, keyboards for years using the synch port, IR, or Bluetooth.

Depending on the Treo you have a built-in keyboard, on screen keyboard, and Grafitti. I actually have Grafitti 1 and 2 on mine if I want it. I prefer Graf1.

Comparing an older Palm with newer Windows Mobile isn't quite fair since it ignores the competition of the day. I started with a Hitachi H/PC with Windows CE1. Handwriting recognition was comically slow and the keyboard was too small. Grafitti may have required practice but it was about as fast as typing on the H/PC and it could be done without a desk (the H/PC was too big and the wrong shape to thumb-type).

Synch software from microsoft is just as buggy as anything from Palm. I've had to support everything from the Pilot & WinCE 1 to recent Axims, Jornadas and Treos. The same synch software, installed from the same CD, talking to the same PDA will may run stably on one just-unboxed-from-dell PC and not another. Drives me insane. On the whole, I've had more trouble with getting ActiveSync to work at all but probably more trouble getting HotSync to do something non-standard (like sync a 3rd party app).

I don't know what you mean by "customize the desktop" but you can acquire alternate launcher programs if you like that completely change the UI of the "OS" (meaning when no program is active.)

I'd like to mount my palm as a USB device without needing a 3rd party app (Missing Synch, CardExport, etc) too. I'd much prefer a mini-USB port.

You can get custom ROMs for Palms now; numerous homebrew ROMs exist to add/remove various applications and features. I would like that to continue. I want anything that must be GPLd to have its source properly released but I'm not so much of a info-anarchist to have a problem with closed source applications.

Tom-Tom has had PalmOS support for several years. I'm too lazy to figure out just how many years.

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2006/11/28/o2_ships_o rbit/
... which ships with:
http://www.pocketgpsworld.com/copilot-live-ppc-5.p hp
As to the one touch blog bit, I'm sure someone's written something for WM5?