Category: GPS

Location comes to iLife

iphoto GPS So the mac hackers have been taking apart the latest release of iPhoto and have found details of potential GPS integration and closer ties with Google Maps.

MacTelChat reports that there are a number of hidden references in the package which suggest that photos may in the near future be organised by location and mapped using the google maps api.

The ability to extract GPS information available from a photo’s EXIF data is not new, and geo-tagging of photos has been made very popular by Flickr, but the intergration with google maps rather than mapquest as used in the past in the MacOS X addressbook is of greater interest ?

Then again the blogosphere loves to speculate about Apples future plans…

Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.

GPS Thoughts

Bye-bye Road Atlas !

Silicon.com reports the latest findings from analysts Canalys, who note that sales of GPS navigation systems (Satnavs) have again grown over 100% in the past year, with Tom Tom and Garmin the major players.

Doubling market share soon moves a market, so the road atlas may soon go the same way as the eight track stereo – I’m still to be convinced about smart phones as navigation devices, although clearly off-board navigation and the required wireless capability will be important over the next couple of years, the form factor is still all wrong.

The big deal will be the first sub £100, €100, $100 device..the race is on!

Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.

Apple GPS

GPS management on the Mac

RouteBuddy

For a long time the Mac has been the poor relation of the Windows PC in terms of GPS managment software, the type of software that allows users to create and downlaod waypoints, display base mapping and user defined routes. RouteBuddy is a universal binary application that now fills this gap supporting Garmin and most other consumer GPS recievers which use the NMEA standard. It also works with bluetooth and allows Tele Atlas mapping to be downloaded.

Now if only we could convince ESRI or MapInfo to get back into the Mac software market.. but then again maybe we are all waiting on the expected windows virtualisation solution in OS X v10.5 Leopard ?

Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.