Maybe you desire a Garmin 196 that can go anyplace with you. One weekend you could be boating, another weekend mountain biking. You need crossover navigator maps so you don’t have to buy separate GPS systems for every vehicle you own. Depending in your wants, there are many totally different Garmin GPS navigation systems, relying on what you may be utilizing them for.

Garmin knew that lively people needed a dependable crossover system to assist them navigate their way. In this world of James Bond caliber adventure, we find ourselves traveling by various modes in our pursuits. On the very beginning of the Garmin line of GPS maps, there are aviation navigator maps for pilots to travel by land, air and sea, such as the GPSMAP ninety six or 196, for example. From these primary gray-scale fashions, Garmin has superior to full-coloration transportable devices just like the GPSMAP 495 and 496, including airport maps, pre-loaded maps, 3,000 favourite locations, site visitors info providers, voice prompts, satellite radio and weather.

The 60 Series is very in style for individuals who need a mapping handheld Garmin GPSMAP for mountaineering, biking and exploring. As the location says, the Garmin 196 “puts the great outdoor in the palm of your hand.” The excessive-sensitivity of those GPS units offers you with good satellite tv for pc reception even in dense foliage or deep canyons. The screen is flexible and will be seen throughout evening or day conditions and might even survive a dunk in the water if it is encased in the IPX7.

The constructed-in America auto-route base map will present you highways, exits and tide data, in addition to offering flip-by-flip directions. To make use of, you possibly can connect to your pc utilizing a USB cable to load map information or switch routes and custom locations; or you may be able to buy 64 MB microSD cards that come pre-loaded with MapSource maps, so you do not have to hook up to your computer at all. The garmin updates  takes you from the backwoods and boundary waters to the highways with 28 hours of dependable battery life, in addition to geocaching features, video games, alarm clock performance, as well as optimal hunting/fishing instances and sunrise/sundown/moon phase tables.

A Garmin GPSMAP might are available numerous formats. If you’re on the street, you will probably be using “City Navigator” maps, which embrace over 6 million factors of curiosity, traffic knowledge and detailed street information. Once you’re crusing, you will use the “Blue Chart” GPS navigation maps with 3-D perspective, coastal factors of curiosity, depth contours, shipwreck locations and auto-information technology. Hikers will use the “Topo US” maps that embody terrain contours, elevation data, trails, bodies of water, routable roads and factors of interest.

Garmin Nuvi 1450

The Garmin Nuvi 1450 gps unit has a 5″ touchscreen display, a suitable measurement for your preference of in car direction-finding system. The Nuvi 1450 also has several additional capabilities that allow it to expand above a traditional in vehicle gps, with the optional download the CityXplorer technology making it simpler to navigate {around} big towns where finding public transportation can be hard. Garmin apply the HotFix satellite prediction to help in calculation of your {position} for enhanced real time information to get you around a lot quicker.

Features

Image resolution of the 5 inch WQVGA TFT screen is a maximum 480 x 272 pixels, with a rechargeable lithium ion battery boosting the energy needs. Added attributes that are included to assist with different travel conditions include currency converter, sizes converter and JPEG picture viewer. The addition of a USB interface to your computer, as well as support for microSD cards provides flexibility when trying to transfer data to the system. A ‘Where Am I’ emergency locator gives exact latitude and longitude coordinates, while also providing information on facilities just like police stations and hospitals that are nearest to that location.

Ergonomics

An extraordinary feature that is incorporated with Garmin Nuvi 1450 systems is the ecoRoute option, providing an added eco-friendly way of getting to a place by determining the most fuel efficient route. The measurement of the touchscreen makes viewing easier, with the user interface being very simple to follow and responsive. Overall the GPS device weighs 7.8 ounces and has a complete width of 5.4inches, so that it a little larger on common when compared with different models, but the included visibility that is offered while driving should make up for that.

Conclusion

For an in car navigation system to be beneficial three key attributes are expected. Firstly, an user friendly interfaces to quickly provide route determination. Second, a reliable screen to view info at a glance and thirdly, a reliable connection to make certain information is updated. The Garmin Nuvi 1450 manages to pull all of these features together and is a worthy selection for in car navigation, with some features that also assist when not driving.

Visa is making a strategic investment in mobile payment provider Square, providing the start-up with an undisclosed sum of money as well as a new advisory board member. It’s a nice boost for Square, which is on a roll as it tries to ramp up payments via a smartphone. But it also highlights the growing role of credit card companies as they try to prepare for the growing mobile payments boom.

As more and more transactions flow through a mobile phone, Visa, Mastercard and American Express have been making moves to position themselves in different ways to take advantage of this trend. It’s not just a passing interest for these companies. In many ways, they need to be actively involved in the rise of mobile payments, which can threaten to cut them and their cards out of the process. Here’s a look at what some of the biggest players are doing in the field:

Mastercard — Mastercard has been an early believer in near field communication and has been working on contactless payments all the way back to 2002 with its PayPass system. It now has 88 million PayPass cards and devices in use at 276,000 merchant locations. And it’s rolling out worldwide deployments of near field communication, a short-range wireless technology that is being used for contactless payments. Mastercard is also working with Gemalto, which will include Mastercard’s PayPass authentication and credentials in Gemalto’s SIM cards. When paired with an NFC-enabled phone, it will mean easier use of PayPass NFC transactions.

Mastercard is also reportedly teaming with Google on an application that will allow payments through NFC-enabled Android devices. This would allow Android devices to become mobile wallets that could also provide consumers with offers and discounts from retailers when they made a transaction. Mastercard is also looking at embedding NFC credentials on microSD cards, which banks such as Bank of America and others are trialing.

Visa — Visa is also working on the NFC front and is working as well on microSD solutions with banks. Visa also announced it was teaming with Samsung to bring NFC payments to the Olympics in London next year. The company is also looking to take on Paypal with its own personal payments system that builds off its VisaNet global payments network. The move takes Visa beyond its traditional strength of point of sales and into the world of electronic payments.

With the investment in Square, Visa is also showing that it’s looking to tap mobile card readers to help grow the number of merchants who can tap into its global payment network. This is more than just a symbolic move. It validates the work of Square and rivals Intuit and VeriFone and it also puts Visa in a position to acquire Square or at the very least, learn a lot about this business. Visa is also getting into virtual goods monetization with its acquisition of Playspan in February, which offers a payment platform for developers looking to sell virtual goods. Visa is showing a lot of diversity, trying to be in a number of places as new payment opportunities arise.

American Express — AmEx recently threw its hat into the personal payments ring with Serve, a new payment network that allows people to pay each other online, through mobile phones and through American Express’ merchant locations. Funds can be added to Serve accounts from a variety of sources including debit cards, bank accounts and credits cards including American Express rivals. Users can manage their accounts and make payments through a smartphone app or using a prepaid card linked to Serve, which is good at all American Express locations. Serve also plans on delivering marketing offers to users, which could be a lucrative business for payment processors.

Serve pits AmEx against PayPal but it also positions the company better in the broader mobile payments market. The platform is meant to evolve over time and will eventually incorporate NFC payments. In the meantime, American Express also announced it is partnering with mobile payment start-up Payfone, which is poised to unveil a payment processing system that allows customers to pay using their mobile phone number. The alliance helps Serve provide more payment options like carrier billing, which is another major piece of the mobile payments realm. American Express has been more quiet on the mobile payments front but it’s showing that its eager to catch up.

As I said earlier, the credit card companies know they need to get active in mobile payments or risk being bypassed. But as we’ve noted before, mobile payments is a broad category that means a lot of things from NFC and carrier billing to more personal payment networks and solutions like Starbucks’ mobile card app.  The card companies already have an enviable relationship with consumers that they are now leveraging as they move in this direction. But the key for these companies is to ensure they’re represented in all of these new and sometimes competing payment options as they emerge. It’s still early but the increased movement by the big credit card companies show they don’t want to be caught flatfooted when these things take off.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d):

• Mobile Q1: All Eyes on Tablets, T-Mobile and AT&T
• Is There Any Money for Carriers in the Mobile Wallet?
• Why Apps Are Crucial for the Mobile Wallet

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Currently, smartphone MicroSD cards top out at 16GB. Removable card would match maximum internal capacity of high-end phones like the iPhone 3GS and Nexus One.

Originally posted at News – Business Tech

Does the name Bunnie Huang ring a bell? It might if you were around the Xbox “scene” in 2002, when people from all over the world were on Xbox hacking forums trying to figure out what made Microsoft’s first console tick, so to speak. It was truly exciting—we’re talking Paris in the 50s exciting. Mr. Huang has since gotten a job at Chumby, putting his technical know-how to good use and helping to create the adorable little clock-widget-thing. While in China, Mr. Huang discovered a problem with a number of Kingston-branded microSD cards that were to be used in Chumby production. The problem was that they were counterfeit, or “irregular” in the measured parlance of the blog post.

Mr. Huang, who wrote a book detailing his experience of hacking the Xbox, tried to determine why the Kingston microSD cards were “irregular.” Is Kingston selling bum cards to paying customers? That’s what Mr. Huang tried to figure out.

The post is long and gets a little technical, but it’s nothing you guys can’t handle. You’re not USA Today readers!

Here’s the big reveal:

Significantly, Kingston is revealed as simply a vendor that re-marks other people’s chips in its own packaging. Every Kingston card surprisingly had a Sandisk/Toshiba memory chip inside, and the only variance or “value add” that could be found is in the selection of the controller chip. Oddly enough, of all the vendors, Kingston quoted with the best lead times and pricing — better than SanDisk or Samsung, despite the competition making all their own silicon and thereby having a lower inherent cost structure. This tells me that Kingston must be crushed when it comes to margin, which may explain why irregular cards are finding their way into their supply chain.

That is to say, Kingston has razor thin profit margins. It doesn’t make its own flash chips—Samsung and SanDisk do, but you can’t buy Samsung chips at retail—so it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility if a couple of “irregular” cards make their way into the Kingston supply. The odds of you walking into Wal-Mart and walking out with an “irregular” Kingston flash card are incredibly small, but the nature of Kingston’s business means they could be more susceptible to “irregularities” than companies that produce their own chips.

So yeah, be sure to read that whole post. Well worth the read, I’d say.

via Boing Boing

By Andrew Liszewski

Today Openmoko announced the availability of the Spring 2010 software update for their WikiReader device. In addition to now including math equations which are rendered as crisp bitmap images, and updates to its database of 3+ million Wikipedia articles, the Spring 2010 update also improves the on-screen keyboard with animated key presses similar to the iPhone, fluid scrolling and a much needed, and much appreciated, back button for returning to previously searched articles. WikiReader owners can download the update for free, but if you’re less tech-savvy there’s a yearly subscription service which includes two pre-loaded microSD cards for $29.

And look for our review of the WikiReader, with the updated software, in the coming weeks.

[ Openmoko WikiReader ]