Gregory Szorc's blog

New Gadget for Graduation

I am officially done with classes at Case. My final final was Thursday morning and my last assignment was turned in later that afternoon. After a night of complimentary drinks from old friends, I drove down to Bloomington, IN for the wedding of a good friend from high school. On Sunday, my parents treated me to a celebration dinner. Afterwards, Christmas came early when I received my graduation present: a Garmin Nüvi 360 navigation system.

I have seen some gadgets in my day, but this one blows me away. If I didn't know any better, I'd say Apple made this product. The interface is simple, yet powerful. It is fun to use and the intuitive feature list is just amazing. On the first day, it was too late to drive, so I was just playing with the touchscreen interface and the location look-up tool. It is hard to believe this device, which is the size of a deck of cards, has a database of EVERYTHING in the United States. You click a specific category (food, entertainment, gas, etc) and it lists the closest places to where you are. For larger categories, like food, it has sub-categories, such as Asian, American, etc. As I was playing with it in bed, I noticed the hold-to-pan interface, like on Google Maps. You just put your finger on a point on the screen and slide it across the map and the whole interface shifts, updating in real time!

The next day, I started playing with the most complicated features. I was able to pair up the device with my Verizon LG phone using Bluetooth. I can now use the device's speaker and microphone when in my car. Best of all, when I look up a place using the interface, I can press the phone button to call them without even touching my phone. How cool is that! Unfortunately, my LG phone does not support the address book synchronization feature. I was able to try it on my mom's Motorola phone. Let's just say my next phone will definitely be fully compatible with this device. When enabled, you can press the address book button on the touchscreen and scroll through names. When you see someone you want to call, just press their name. I believe it also supports plotting their home address into the navigation mode, but I am not definitive. The only significant feature I have yet to try is the importation of "Points-of-Interest" data. Geo-encoded data sets of such things as speed cameras can be imported into the device and overlayed on the maps. There is lots of potential here.

As for driving, the device delivers as well. Unlike some units I've seen, this one isn't annoying (I found the male British TTS voice to be the best). Audible alerts are sane and when you detour from the given route, it just recalculates the new route based upon your new location. I've seen some units that tell you to make a u-turn. How annoying! I love the ETA clock in the corner of the display. Depending on where you are and the current speed, it gives you the time it think you will arrive. There is also a trip screen the keeps track of average speed, distance, total moving time, total stopped time, average moving speed, maximum speed, etc.

I can't wait to test out some of the different navigation modes. It is smart enough to know that when in pedestrian mode, you can walk down one-way streets. It will also be interesting to see if I can mount it on my bicycle and what help it gives. I would salivate if it had a feature to input desired bike route distances and elevation changes and it calculated a route, but I don't think that is there yet.

It is also worth mentioning that the device is Linux compatible. I just plugged a USB cable into the unit and was able to mount the device as a disk drive. I was able to upgrade the firmware on the device by using WINE to run the firmware .exe distributed by Garmin. I copied the extracted files to the appropriate directories on the device, unmounted and ejected the device, then turned it off then on. The device recognized the presence of the new firmware and updated accordingly.

Although I've only had this device for two days, I am very excited about its potential. It will certainly be very useful when I'm exploring the new terrain of California.

You can ping this entry by using http://blog.case.edu/gps10/mt-tb.cgi/11985 .

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