Editorial

Sygic's Aura 3D navigation platform seems to have garnered an awful lot of interest in the forums following our CeBIT news item last week. The most common question being asked of course is "when can I buy it?". Sygic haven't confirmed a release date to us yet but they have said it will be "soon". One thing I am certain of is that they have a winner on their hands when it is released.

With this years very disappointing CeBIT event behind us we now return to the GPS news doldrums. Outside of yet another "new iPhone GPS app" story there has been very little worthy of reporting of late. What is clear is that smartphone based GPS has benefited hugely from the downturn in the market. Despite all previous analyst forecasts putting PNDs ahead of smartphones for a few years to come the market downturn has given smartphones a chance to leap ahead. It's a market gain from which PNDs may never recover.

Darren Griffin

Google Street View unveils comprehensive UK coverage

Google went live yesterday with full UK Street View coverage. We announced the launch ahead of the unveiling on our web site Wednesday night and at the stroke of midnight Google threw the switch.

The Mountain View behemoth unveiled a comprehensive map of the UK with Street View's full 360 degree photo coverage of much of the UK.

Despite the doubters, "full" does indeed appear to mean very comprehensive coverage indeed. Whereas the service was only previously available in a few major cities, coverage has now been extended to most of the country including the farther reaches such as the Shetland Isles and some National Parks where Google resorted to a Street View camera equipped tricycle!

The result of an 18mth project, Google has been surveying the country and collating the massive amounts of data required to build and offer the full UK Street View map.

Despite privacy concerns, the Street View service has proved to be very popular. Google's software automatically blurs the faces of individuals and a similar process operates to obscure vehicle number plates. PGPS Moderator 'Oldboy' stars in the photo above as he snaps the Street View car passing by!

Google aren't always favourites of mine, the Big Brother attitude sometimes popping above the corporate 'nice people' facade but you have to tip your hats to the achievement here.

You can check if your neighbourhood has been captured here.

Click here to read more.

CamerAlert App Snaps Mobile Speed Camera in Action

Some of you may recall a small add-on we used to offer for TomTom satnav's called POICapture that provided the ability to quickly and safely capture new speed camera locations.

Frustratingly, TomTom pulled support for the SDK (Software Development Kit) that allowed us and other developers to create add-on software such as POICapture.

And so there hasn't been an easy way to capture locations 'on the go' in a few simple clicks.

CamerAlert partly fills that void. Since it's launch a few short weeks ago we have had received over 4,000 submissions from CamerAlert users alone.

Nearly all the current M6 SPECS cameras have been reported and/or confirmed by CamerAlert users, speeding up the capture and verification process and most importantly, improving the data quality for our users.

Our database admin, MaFt provides a small example of how much easier his job becomes when the reports contain all the important data and other valuable details here.

Speed Camera data updated - 10th March 2010 - v8.032

This week we have 77 changes to the database. CamerAlert continues to be responsible for a large number of reports but we're still seeing a great many via our traditional roots and we're grateful to all of you who make the effort to report.

We DO NOT want remove reports for mobile locations. These are 'possible locations' and not a guarantee that a speed camera van will be in operation when you pass.

This week we have pleasure in awarding the following nine members who now have lifetime free access to our database:

andy-l, buntmeister, clearys, galoubet, GeoffDenman, ianharris88, krowdrah, MorrisonHotel and nockie3.

New lifers are reminded that it is your responsibility to ensure you cancel any recurring PayPal payments for the PocketGPSWorld subscription. This is done via your PayPal account. If you do not then YOU WILL be charged at the next renewal point!

As always, to download the latest release visit the download page here and click here to visit the submission page to file speed camera reports.

Reviewed: i-gotU GT-600 GPS Travel and Sports Logger

Last year we reviewed the i-gotU GT-200e from MobileAction, a Bluetooth enabled data logger with a generous 64MB onboard memory.

While we did like some aspects of the device (like the waterproof design and the large memory) we also raised some issues (like the poorly designed main button, and the so-so battery life).

MobileAction asked us to review the successor device, the i-gotU GT-600 which comes minus the Bluetooth radio but with added motion detection. Read on to see how the new model fared.

Read the full review here