[Harv]

I just turned in a long article / review to the magazine which will appear in the "next" issue in a couple months.. Mapopolis.com has released NavCard, which is seamless street level maps of the entire USA (lower 48), with a dozen levels of zoom on a 1 gig SD card. It works in full wide-screen landscape mode on the Zodiac just fine.

Now since the Zodiac is the only Palm (that I know of, someone correct me if I'm wrong) that has two card slots, this means it's the only Palm in which you can put NavCard in the SD slot, and an SDIO GPS card in the second slot, and have voice-prompted, real-time GPS navigation and mapping of the entire USA on a single device with no cables or external anything required.. pretty sexy stuff..

The ONLY seller/maker/purveyor of an SDIO GPS driver for PalmOS is iGolf Technologies - igolftech.com

They sell the driver alone for about $25.00, or the driver in combination with a Panasonic SDIO GPS card for about $250.00.. yeah, it's pricey, but if you want the whole country on a single card, NavCard is the only solution, and if you want both cards in a single device, a Zodiac is the only way it can be done, as far as I know.. NavCard works with other modern Palms, but they require an external GPS receiver..

The only problem is the lack of a Zodiac DC car charger / cable.. I don't know why Tapwave hasn't released one yet, but we really need one.. so although the SDIO GPS card uses very little power, if you set NavCard to leave the screen on for an hour (same setting that regular Mapopolis has).. and use voice prompting for turn-by-turn navigation, your Zodiac's battery will say seeya later in an hour or two..

Anyway, these are two pretty cutting-edge products.. if you feel like ponying up about $300.00 (including an AC > DC power inverter for use in the car if you plan to keep the Zodiac powered on for longer than an hour or two while navigating with voice prompting).. then there ya go..

They're not the equal of an in-dash GPS system, but then those cost $1500 to $3000 in new cars, and they're not portable You could literally strap a Zodiac with these two cards in it to the handlebars of a bike and get realtime GPS voice-prompted navigation across the entire country, if you wanted to.. the only problem would be what to do when your battery drains down..

Yeah, you can spend $1000 on a Garmin Street Pilot to plunk on your dash, but try carrying that around with you outside your car, plus it's a single-purpose device..

NavCard uses the NavTeq 2005 mapping data.. now if you want to see something really slick, check out http://maps.google.com - play around with it for a while, it's truly amazing.. and it uses the same data, although it's a helluva lot faster than on a PDA, you'd expect that.. but.. there's no way to make Google's NavTeq mapping link to a GPS unit, if, for example, you wanted to lug a laptop around with you in the car..

Try using it to plot a route from your home address to the White House or Disneyland or anything coast-to-coast and see how fast it is.. find your address and then ask it to show you every McDonalds near you or every ATM, school, supermarket, Mexican restaurant, whatever.

NavCard doesn't have ALL the POIs (Points of Interest) that Google has, simply because there is a limit as to how much data they could cram onto a 1 gig SD card. It's pretty remarkble that they could squish the street level maps of the whole USA onto a 1 gig card at all.. With a 2 gig card, they could literally have ALL the data, but then the product would cost twice as much..

Anyway I've been playing with NavCard and SDIO GPS in my Zodiac 2 and SDIO GPS with regular Mapopolis in my Treo 650 for over a month.. any questions, just holler, and time-permitting, I'll try to answer them..

IMO, this is a "killer app".. simply because with its two slots, the Zodiac is the only Palm in which you can put both these cards at the same time..

Harv

[Galder]

OMG that is cool someone that has an in to Tapewave need to E-mail them ASAP to get this set up for the Zod. Tapwave could make some deals with these companies and maybe get a pacage deal and sell it at the Tapwave store for a better price, this will sell more Zods.

[LIZARDKING]

"The only problem is the lack of a Zodiac DC car charger / cable.. I don't know why Tapwave hasn't released one yet, but we really need one.."


It was announced with the hardcase by tw during the Vegas CES!

[Harv]

LIZARDKING, on Mar 6 2005, 03:18 PM, said:

"The only problem is the lack of a Zodiac DC car charger / cable.. I don't know why Tapwave hasn't released one yet, but we really need one.."
It was announced with the hardcase by tw during the Vegas CES!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Announcements are fine.. but they're just pretty words until you can actually buy the product. I suspect that Tapwave will offer a Zodiac DC car charger cable sooner or later.. meanwhile you can get a DC > AC power inverter and use your regular AC charger in the car, if you want to haul around yet another thing..

By the way, I got notification that you posted that the T5 also has two SD card slots, came here to reply to you that it doesn't (I had a loaner from palmOne's PR firm and reviewed it for the magazine..) .. and notice your post was gone.. guess you realized you erred..

Specs on the T5::..

http://www.palmone.c...en-t5/specs.epl


Harv

This post has been edited by Harv: 06 March 2005 - 11:28 PM

[Speedy064]

very cool!
I guess you could use a car charger if you did a mod such as this one
http://www.tapland.c...hlight=gamegrip

[JLobel]

lol that is so crazy

[LIZARDKING]

Yes Harv, you are correct about me first posting about the T5 having 2 SD slots in which I had thought it did when it was first announced then for some reason(do not like posting Bull) I decided to do a quick Google and realized my mistake!!

Thanx!! Oh and TW announcing the world then later they only can provide us is a buckett full of sand and a cup of water......

[qwertyuiop2]

Harv, on Mar 6 2005, 05:44 PM, said:

You could literally strap a Zodiac with these two cards in it to the handlebars of a bike and get realtime GPS voice-prompted navigation across the entire country, if you wanted to.. the only problem would be what to do when your battery drains down..

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

1. Solar panel
2. Generator attached to back wheel

Just to add to the high-techness of this topic.

[sharp896]

i was also thinking a generator that used the crank or back wheel to generate power. if you've got a 10-speed, you can crank that thing pretty fast and not go far. you could rig it so there an ac plug on the handlebars (granted it doesn't have a gyro like a bmx bike) and you could use it with just about anything.

it's nothing i could afford, and plus i'm possibly leaving the country in a few months...so i'd need one for japan...and that would probably fit onto a smaller card considering it's mostly mountains and roughly the size of cali...or at least they could fit mor POI's.

[pablo]

Harv - you might want to try posting this over at Tapland. They have a GPS Hardware and Software forum and this would fit very nicely over there... People around here are mostly interested in the gaming aspect of the Zodiac. Tapland is a little more general - there is a great thread over there right now by a guy who soldered a wifi card into his Zod!

[Harv]

pablo, on Mar 11 2005, 01:05 PM, said:

Harv - you might want to try posting this over at Tapland.  They have a GPS Hardware and Software forum and this would fit very nicely over there...  People around here are mostly interested in the gaming aspect of the Zodiac.  Tapland is a little more general - there is a great thread over there right now by a guy who soldered a wifi card into his Zod!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Hi..

a) I've only got so many hours in the day to visit these boards, sniff out and acquire new products for reviews for the magazine, write reviews, eat, sleep, and even lie around doing nothing now and then ..

2) People here went on endlessly about the Zodiac needing a "Killer app." I think having the entire USA on a 1 gig SD card in one slot and an SDIO GPS receiver in the other slot, which is something ONLY a Zodiac can do, since no other Palm has two slots, is a killer app.. IMO, others may choose to disagree.. no, it's not a game, but it's a lot of fun ..

III) There are plenty of long discussions here about things that aren't games, such as the recent thread about the new metal case.. I started a thread a couple months ago about the Tapwave WiFi driver and the SanDisk SDIO WiFi card and got a bajillion views and dozens of responses.. that's not a game, and yet people were intensely interested in it..

Anyway.. to put some game content into this post, I've been playing with (and just reviewed) LDW's Fish Tycoon, which I think is one of the coolest things I've ever had on my Zodiac 2.. if you like running around shooting and blowing up stuff, this isn't for you, but it's an absolutely gorgeous looking program which has a lot of interesting strategy in it, or you can just put it into "screen saver" mode and prop your Zodiac up on your desk and have a beautiful, incredibly realistic little aquarium to look at.. it's very soothing just to watch it.. and it's surprising how you can actually become emotionally involved with little fish that are nothing more than pixels on a small screen..


Harv

This post has been edited by Harv: 11 March 2005 - 09:26 PM

[pablo]

Harv - you sound a bit pissed at my post. No offense was intended. It was just a suggestion. Anyway, I've read some of your other posts and think you've added a lot to this community... I just thought the people at tapland would really appresiate your stuff too...

[LIZARDKING]

He does not sound pissed-off at you!?! The guy is a professional Editor.....

Yes Harv, i agree totally about fishtycoon, very entertaining title!!
I have grossed well over 30,000 in cash-money w/ a certain breed!!

But still missing just 2 magical fish to discover...

Very nerv racking indeed, cannot let them die while working a full time job!!!

[SNES350]

Ha this is awesome, I only wish I had the money to burn. woot for multipurpose devices with expandability! Anyone know of a good holder to use in the car to see your Zodiac easily?

[LIZARDKING]

"Anyone know of a good holder to use in the car to see your Zodiac easily?"

Yeah SNES350, it is called my lap. It came with me for free since the day i was born! and is fully compatible with the Z!!!