General Dynamics Tests GPS-Guided Air-Dropped Mortars

General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems has successfully demonstrated the ability to maneuver and guide air-dropped mortars to a stationary ground target after release from an aircraft, according to the company.[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

ITT's GPS Contact Improves Signal Transmission In Handhelds

ITT Interconnect Solutions has expanded its Universal Contact family with the Universal GPS Contact, designed so that it maintains signal length and wave integrity, transmitting and receiving distortion-free signals.br/br/[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/GpsWorld-LatestNews/~4/532619252" height="1" width="1"/

Southwest Airlines Preparing for RNP Implementation

Southwest Airlines says it will invest $175 million over the next six years to implement Required Navigation Performance (RNP) procedures at all 64 airports it serves. It made the announcement at the Eco-Aviation Conference in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, June 19.

Samsung UltraTouch S8300

We first talked about Samsung S8300 at the end of 2008. Today Samsung made the S8300 official, and wants us to call it Samsung UltraTOUCH S8300. Ultra Touch S8300 is a slider phone with AMOLED touch screen that measures 2.8 inches. The biggest feature that sticks out with Samsung S8300 -besides integrating an A-GPS receiver- is its 8MP digital camera. Some people may suggest this is good enough for you to get rid of your standalone digital camera but I don’t agree. I’m not ready to quit my Canon. When is Canon going to start making phones?

Anyhow. Here are some more specs and features from Samsung UltraTouch S8300:

• HSDPA 7.2Mbps
• measures: 110 x 51.5 x 12.7mm
• anti-scratch screen
• 3×4 keypad slider
• dual power LED flash
• GPS navigation
• geo-tagging
• video recording at 30fps

No news on when this will be available here in the U.S. or for how much just yet… via

Brought to you by your GPS navigation site NaviGadget.

SiRF and Focus SYNC are in sync

You’ve probably already heard about Ford’s SYNC technology, an in-dash platform mostly for communication, and entertainment. However the system is flexible and allows for expansion by letting other platforms take advantage of the ‘architecture bus’ present on SYNC vehicles.

In fact Ford recently announced a couple of new features which allow their vehicles to get traffic information from INRIX and get driving directions from TeleNav using SiRF hardware.

SiRF is teamed up with M/A-COM Technology Solutions to bring this to reality and according to their press release:

M/A-COM Technology Solutions’ new GPS module integrates a highly accurate SiRF GPS receiver running the SiRFDRive2 GPS dead reckoning software, a specialized GPS antenna, a microprocessor controller and memory, as well as a CAN bus transceiver and connector and associated software to create a “location server” on the vehicle network that literally location-enables the entire vehicle.

What’s interesting about the new SiRF platform used on Ford’s is that is actually can communicate with others sensors in the vehicle such as speedometer, odometer, and heading to get a better sense of position when GPS signals are not reliable.

Brought to you by your GPS navigation site NaviGadget.

Analyses of a Drop in GPS Satellite Numbers

Professor Richard Langley of the University of New Brunswick (also GPS World Innovation editor) has done several analyses to see how the use of GLONASS satellites could help compensate for a potential reduction in the number of available GPS satellites. These studies came in response to a warning from the U.S. Government Accountability Office about the potential drop in the number of...
space geodesy

Navteq to Provide Utilities Data Licensing through ESRI

Mapmaker Navteq is offering a Utility Street Data Enterprise License Agreement (ELA) as an enhancement to the recently launched ESRI Small Utilities ELA. Available only through ESRI, the customized Navteq offering can be obtained by any U.S. utility with meter counts of 100,000 or less.

News gadgets

iPhone GPS apps

It’s only been a few weeks since the new iPhone 3.0 operating system has been released and we already have a handful of GPS navigation system applications available/ or soon to be released. Let’s recap what we have so far:

TeleNav
Also known as AT&T Navigator this app is developed by TeleNav. Free to install, $10/month.

Navigon
Only European version of Navigon is out Costs $95. Works with no internet connection (maps are local). No monthly fee.

TomTom
TomTom is the biggest name in Europe when it comes to sat nav. They demoed their app with the release of iPhone 3GS but still no news from them.

Gokivo
Gokivo is from Networks In Motion. They have a lot of experience in this just like the rest of the names up here. $1 to install, $10/month for subscription. Here’s a review that says it doesn’t work so well.

Sygic
Sygic urrently available for South East Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand) for $80 and Australia + New Zealand for $65. No monthly fee.

Are we forgetting anyone? Also if you’ve been using any of these apps get in touch with us to get your review published here – even if it’s just a paragraph.

Brought to you by your GPS navigation site space geodesy.