Tag: satnav

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Navigate to a photo

I was using my iPhone the other day to navigate using the TomTom App when I noticed a new “destination” option, Photo!

I clicked the menu item and I was presented with a series of photographs.

Now initially I thought, well what was the point of that, if it was a photo I had taken I could (as I would be there) add the destination to the TomTom direct. That’s quite useful though as taking a photograph can be quicker than starting up the TomTom App, just have to remember not to delete it from the phone.

But looking through the photographs I realised that some of them were photographs from my photo albums and had not been taken with my iPhone, but obviously also had geo-data attached to the photo. I checked and found that the photographs were in fact taken with a Sony HDR video camera with GPS.

This made a big difference to the usefulness of this option, as somebody else could take a photograph with their GPS enabled camera, cameraphone or iPhone and send me the photo via e-mail. I could then save this and use TomTom to navigate to the GPS co-ordinates attached to the photograph. I tried this out and it worked.

I did try saving a photo from Flickr using FlickStackr, but the TomTom software didn’t pick it up, I suspect the geo-data was not included when I saved the image.

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Free TomTom adapter for iPhone 4

Back in July I wrote a blog post about the problems of using the then new iPhone 4G with the existing TomTom iPhone Car Kit.

My main concern now though is compatibility with the iPhone 4. It does click in, but you wouldn’t want to do it too often. However even if you do click it in, there is no connection made with the Car Kit, so no charging and I guess no enhanced GPS.

You can , according to the internet tubes, add some padding that will allow it to work, but not tried that yet.

I would like TomTom to offer upgrades to an iPhone 4 model or even free upgrades would be nice.

Well if you head on over to the TomTom website you can claim a free adapter for your iPhone 4G to allow it to work properly with the Car Kit.

Excellent and well done TomTom.

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TomTom Car Kit for the iPhone

I’ve had my TomTom Car Kit for the iPhone for some time now and have been quite pleased with it. The enhanced GPS signal does work really well and it manages to get a lock really quickly. The handsfree calling does work, but not if the road is noisy. I thought the kit came with a FM transmitter, it doesn’t, it comes with an audio out port. Quite useless for a car with no audio in!

My main concern now though is compatibility with the iPhone 4. It does click in, but you wouldn’t want to do it too often. However even if you do click it in, there is no connection made with the Car Kit, so no charging and I guess no enhanced GPS.

You can , according to the internet tubes, add some padding that will allow it to work, but not tried that yet.

I would like TomTom to offer upgrades to an iPhone 4 model or even free upgrades would be nice.

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Nokia N810 GPS

I have been playing about with a Nokia N810 for a few weeks now and only today did I manage to get the GPS working at which point five minutes later the battery gave out.

So I didn’t really get a chance to play as much as I would like.

Like most GPS devices you do need to leave it for a while watching the sky before it can work out where it is.

Once it did, there I was correct on the map.

Alas there is no included navigation software on the Nokia N810, you need to purchase additional software at €99 for that, and at that kind of price I would choose a dedicated satnav system.

Where I think the GPS will be useful is when you are lost and not quite sure where your destination is.

Charging the N810 up again and I might have another play tomorrow.