GPS

A scrappy rebel alliance launches jury-rigged space weapons in the hope of defeating a monolithic empire that's put the choke hold on freedom.

Sound like a space opera you might've seen a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away?

Actually, it's the latest imagined scenario to arise from one of Europe's major hacking conferences, which just wrapped up its 2011 edition in Berlin.

As the BBC's David Meyer reports, SOPA-hating hackers at the 28th Chaos Communication Congress (or 28C3) are hatching a plan to develop a DIY satellite-communications network that could keep the Internet alive and unfettered in the face of any government effort to pull the plug.

"The first goal is an uncensorable Internet in space," Meyer quotes hacktivist Nick Farr as saying. "Let's take the Internet out of the control of terrestrial entities."

Farr and others dream of a Hackerspace Global Grid made up of homemade satellites, along with ground stations for tracking and communicating with the self-made Sputniks.… Read more

Imagine popping in your earbuds, queuing up some tunes, going for a stroll, and then listening to the music morph in response to your surroundings.

Thanks to electronic-music duo Bluebrain--along with a clutch of willing musician friends, the expertise of a software developer, and the iPhone's built-in GPS system--that Brian Eno-esque fantasy is, in fact, a reality.

Washington D.C.-based brothers Ryan and Hays Holladay are continuing their push--perhaps the better word is "meander"--into a new musical realm with their recent album/iPhone app "Central Park (Listen to the Light)." The piece uses GPS to monitor a listener's movements through New York's famous green oasis and play different tracks keyed to specific locales--or "zones" and "pockets"--within the park.… Read more

Sometimes, you don't want a ton of bells and whistles on your GPS device. Sometimes, you just want to reliably and cheaply get from point Alpha to Bravo.

Enter Garmin's Essentials series of Nuvi GPS navigators. Specifically, we're taking a look at the largest model in the entry-level Essentials series: the 5-inch Garmin Nuvi 50.

There aren't many surprises here where design is concerned. If you've handled a Garmin Nuvi in the last half decade, you'll know exactly what to expect from the 50. The icons are all where you'd expect them to … Read more

If you're clinging to flotsam in the middle of the Pacific and need to send an emergency message, DeLorme has a rugged new satellite communicator that can do the job on the cheap.

Its InReach device is a two-way satellite hookup with GPS that lets you send messages from anywhere in the world for as little as $249.95 and a subscription with Iridium's global network from $9.95 monthly.

Used alone, the InReach can send an SOS or up to three preset messages, as well as remote-tracking data; it confirms delivery too. Users can designate recipients such as other InReach devices, e-mail addresses, or Facebook or Twitter accounts before they set out for northern Siberia. … Read more

Could a computer replace this era's crop of clownish sportscasters like Dick Vitale or Lee Corso? We can dream--while a Swiss company works on software that could create artificial intelligence systems to call sporting events.

Computer researchers at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland are working on a system that can track multiple athletes on a football field, a basketball court, or a soccer pitch via multiple cameras and advanced scanning algorithms. These days, computers can track human athletes, racing cars, and other sporting elements via GPS. But that's illegal in many sports as the introduction of such technology threatens to overpower the human element of athletics. The EPFL technology uses visual cues instead. … Read more

TeleNav's new navigation platform promises to link cars and smartphones.

Drivers frequently find themselves consulting a phone for an address, then typing it into a car's navigation system. At the Telematics Munich conference, TeleNav announced a solution to this problem, seamless interactivity between smartphones and TeleNav-equipped cars.

A use case described to CNET by Mark Scalf, director of automotive products for TeleNav, involved a user getting an appointment notification on his cell phone, and easily sending the address for the appointment to the car's navigation system. After parking, the TeleNav system transfers navigation back to the phone, … Read more

Testing GPS devices can be a grind--a dull, boring grind. So when a device comes along promising to revolutionize portable navigation devices, I tend to perk up and take notice. The TomTom Go Live 1535M is one of those attention-getters.

When this portable navigation device (PND) was announced a few weeks ago, I was intrigued by its integration of travel apps that enable the user to tap into Yelp, Trip Advisor, Expedia, and Google Local Search services for up-to-date point-of-interest data and reviews via the same Live data service that beams in its HD Traffic data. I was even more … Read more

Could parking garage maps be coming to BMW's ConnectedDrive navigation system? BMW released a video demonstrating its micro-navigation technology, which shows drivers the most exact route to their destination, down to the parking space.

BMW announced that it was developing this technology last year, and while the new video doesn't show much more detail than what was previously released, it could suggest that this feature, which was developed in conjunction with the 3-series sedan, could be making its way to production. … Read more

On a sunny Tuesday morning I sat in the back of a Navteq Ford Escape meandering around the new UCSF Mission Bay campus, which had recently arisen on the bay side of San Francisco. Navteq employee Mark drove while Alejandro studied a big monitor on a post above the console. The monitor showed the existing digital street map of the area, which, because of the new construction, bore little resemblance to the roads we traveled.

Alejandro noted that when he tells people about his job it seems pointless, because the country has already been mapped, hasn't it? I was getting a first-hand look what a Navteq field team does every day, digging deep into the changes that can come about from a big development project, like the UCSF campus, or smaller road projects, such as when a municipality decides to block off a street. … Read more