Steven Leckart

HOWTO Create a GPS Grafitti Space Invader

SF Weekly writes:

With the aid of a GPS -- and nary a can of spray paint -- San Francisco graphic designer Vicente Montelongo has created a series of bike trails in the city shaped like videogame heroes of yore... Montelongo has been posting maps of his GPS videogame trips on the Web site EveryTrail.com.

New York Times more recently reports:

Part sport, part art, GPS drawing lets runners, walkers, cyclists and hikers imagine themselves anew -- not just as a collection of burning muscles, sweaty armpits, forward motion; not just as people endeavoring to crest a hill or lose five pounds. Instead, they are neo-cartographers, jumbo-size doodlers and bipedal pencils, mapping their track lines across cities, roads and farms, and sharing them online...

Pedaling the rectangular city blocks in San Francisco, Vicente Montelongo, 32, a graphic artist, realized the street layout lent itself to the pixeled shapes of vintage 1980s video game characters like Pac-Man, Q*bert and Donkey Kong. Back home with a printed-out Google map and a pencil, he drew Pac-Man chasing a ghost over in the Sunset District and then set out on his bike, iPhone in tow, GPS mapping application on. After riding 8.6 miles in an unwavering line, he uploaded the GPS track data from his phone, and had his picture.

If you're in SF or planning to visit, here are directions on how to make the above Space Invader.

UPDATE: Offworld beat eveyone to this months ago.

Lisa Katayama

Common outdoor climbing phobias and how to combat them

When you're climbing outdoors, you inevitably end up facing some of your biggest fears, whether it's heights, dirt, or pooing in the wild. Here are some tips and tools on how I dealt with three of my phobias.

1. Mosquitoes
Yes, there are mosquitoes in the wild! Tons at Lover's Leap, where I went to test my climbing gear, especially near the little stream of water that runs along the path to the crags in the early evening. Outdoor Research has gaiters &mdash durable leg warmers that go over and strap under your shoes &mdash that are treated with insect repellent. Gaiters also help keep dirt and pebbles out of your shoes.

Mosquitoes are often at the campsite, too. Since a lot of climbers ditch the tent in an effort to minimize weight, taking a bug bivy with you is also a good idea.

2. Heights
I'm not normally scared of heights, but I have to admit that hanging out on the edge of a 400-foot-tall cliff and trying to look down to see how my climbing buddy was doing whilst being held in place by one flimsy rope was a little freaky at times. Since positive self-talk (it's ok, breathe, you're not gonna fall) was not really working, I thought of my own calming down method &mdash I found tiny flowers and leaves in the rock's cracks and pretended they were my dog Ruby. "Hi Ruby," I'd say, and suddenly my fear was replaced by a warm, fuzzy feeling. "What are you doing here?" I know it sounds crazy, but try it. It works.

3. Getting lost
This may not be a realistic fear unless you're going way into back country, but the thought of not being able to head straight back to base camp after a long day of hiking and climbing is pretty daunting. I was with a trustworthy leader who knew his way around the Leap, but if you're trekking out on your own, you could take the Bushnell Backtrack &mdash it records your starting point and then constantly directs you back to it with arrows and mileage. Of course, this could be totally futile if roads are windy and sparse, or if there are rivers and bears and stuff that get in the way of a direct path home. But it hooks easily onto a carabiner and for $80, it's not bad. (I also recommend this product, by the way, to people who can't locate their cars in mall parking lots.)

4. Pooing in the wild
The only thing I have to say about pooing in nature is that it's fun! Try it. Just remember to wipe, and take your dirty paper with you after you're done.

Lisa Katayama

Advisor: Why my GPS is bad for my brain

I used to never get lost in San Francisco. I was a safe driver who obeyed traffic rules. Then I got a GPS, and everything changed.

I'm a closet road geek. I love thinking about how cities are built and how roads interconnect. When the new Octavia exit to the 101 opened up, I gawked at the pure genius that was highway construction for a month before I finally shut up about it. When I first moved to Bay area, I rode the pee-stained bus up and down the veins and arteries of San Francisco with a foldable city map and learned the names of all the side streets that crossed 19th Avenue, Geary Boulevard, and Market Street. By the time I got a car two years later, I had a map of the city imprinted in my geography geek brain.

At first, the GPS (I have an old Garmin) was a novelty--a tool for experimentation. It was fun to see how long the thing thought it would take to get from point A to point B. I was just the receiving end of a network of commands relayed through the voice of a nice British lady. But then it became a habit, and weird things started happening to me.

I started to forget how to get places without it. The map in my brain became a distorted blur. And then my driving became more reckless. I invented this game where I tried to beat the estimated arrival time that the GPS gave me. Often, that entailed running yellow lights and exceeding the speed limit. Sometimes, the GPS fell off of its suction cup on the windshield and onto the floor, and I would have to fumble around with my right hand while steering the wheel and shifting gears with my left. The worst was when it couldn't locate an address or a satellite signal. I would drive around in circles bouncing between rage and confusion. Why am I relying on this dumb machine? Why is this machine that is supposed to help me get places screwing with my innate sense of direction?

Ultimately, I think the GPS just made me lazier, stupider, angrier, and a worse driver. I wish I could say I'd rather be without one, but a part of me is dependent on it. I'm a recovering GPS addict who has been clean for several weeks, but it's still sitting in my glove compartment beckoning to be used.

Advisor is a new weekly column about how to juggle technology, relationships, and common sense. Got a story to tell? Email it to mango [at] tokyomango [dot] com.

Steven Leckart

New SPOT GPS Tracker: Lighter, Smaller, Silver!

SPOT, maker of the life-saving GPS device, is upgrading its hardware. The next iteration is advertised as 30% smaller and lighter than the og SPOT. It will also be available in silver. Which is nice, cause pretty much everything clashes with orange.

Considering the new SPOT weighs just 5.2 ounces and takes up only 3.7×2.6×1 inches of packspace, you have no reason not to carry one when you go walkabout.

Unless, of course, you don't want to spend the money. The service is $100/year. The current box is $160. Expect the new model to either be the same w/a price drop for the old one. Or, more likely, the new one will retail for ~$229.95.

OK, I'm totally guessing.

[via GearJunkie]

Steven Leckart

Review: Garmin nüvi 1490T

Once Garmin announced the Nuviphone, it was clear they knew the writing was on the wall. The challenge for GPS manufacturers and a handful of portable product makers (like, say, Pure Digital) is what they're going to do now that mobile phones in the U.S. are starting to deliver improved video, photo, audio, GPS, etc.

One approach: do as TomTom does and start making apps for the iPhone and other platforms.

Another approach: keep adding features!

Garmin's nüvi 1490T sports a fairly responsive five-inch touchscreen, microSD slot, picture viewer, and Bluetooth. You're also getting some of the best Garmin has to offer in terms of mapping, including ecoRoute (for hypermilers), traffic alerts, up to 10 saved routes, and lane assist, to name a few. The GPS is great, too: I actually discovered a faster route from my home to the freeway (a route Google Maps has never once suggested).

Best of all, the 1490T is commendably lightweight (7.8 ounces) and extremely thin (0.6 inches thick), presumably to make it easier to pocket, too.*

Unfortunately, the battery life isn't quite up to snuff, at least not for a device intended to be carried wirelessly. On one trip, my fully-charged 1490T lasted just over 2 hours before the "low battery" message came on the screen. Not a big deal if you're in the car, but for a device intended to be carried with you, presumably, everywhere and anywhere, it's certainly something to be aware of.

If you're hoping to take this sightseeing or hiking for any prolonged period of time, I'd argue this is somewhat of a dealbreaker, especially since the 1490T only comes with a USB cable and 12-volt adapter. Thus, if you're out and about and looking to score some juice from a standard wall outlet, you'd need to pocket an adapter &mdash otherwise, you're SOL (three letters that should never come to mind when you think "GPS.").

What's also missing: MP3 player/FM radio, headphone jack, Web browser, camera, and it can't make calls obviously (though it can be paired as a speaker for your cell phone). Sure it could be construed as entirely silly to expect all of these, but for $500, maybe holding my breath for some of these features isn't too much to ask?

*note: I never attached the device to my windshield, mainly because I'm terrified of adding additional blindspots to my car. As a result, I left it sitting either in my lap or on the center console. Easier to grab when exiting, but unfortunately the speaker is in the rear. Thus, I had to choose between viewing the screen and muffling the sound, or forgoing the screen for a reasonable volume. Not a huge deal, but felt worth mentioning here in smaller print.

Steven Leckart

Social Networking Shoe: But Can It Make Calls?

Isaac Daniel poses with his latest GPS-enabled shoe, which uses Bluetooth to broadcast the wearer's location to his/her cell phone and, from there, select friends' cell phones or Facebook.

Daniel's location-aware footwear launched in 2007, targeting parents who want to prevent abductions and keep tabs on their kids (fun police!).

That said, you and I are not really the target demo. Still, at $150 per pair, parents might as well buy their kids a smartphone, no?

This post is part of a theme day: BBG on Fashion

Steven Leckart

Review: A Day w/the Zoombak GPS Locator

My pug Gus is micro-chipped. He's never gotten lost *knock wood*, but if he did &mdash and somehow broke free from his dog tags &mdash I'm confident the chip could help garner a safe return home. However, pet hospitals and shelters stock a variety of scanners, which aren't equally effective at picking up the varying frequencies of various chips.

Plus, if Gus gains weight, we could be screwed altogether. Blogger/veterinarian Patty Khuly explains: "For each 5-pound increase in body weight, the odds that a 125 kHz chip would be missed increases by 5%--by 8% for other frequencies."

Rather than wandering the streets whistling and calling your dog's name hours after you realize the pup's gotten loose, you can get real-time location updates from the Zoombak, a small GPS unit which utilizes web-based Bing Maps, as well as email and SMS alerts.

In theory, this is brilliant. In reality, well, check after the jump for my experience tracking Gus...

READ THE REST

Joel Johnson

"Meet The Mayor": When it feels like the internet is stalking you

Matt Westervelt is an avid user of Foursquare, the social service that lets friends check in to specific places, gain special merit badges, and even become "Mayor" of a location if they're its most frequent visitor among other Foursquare players. Westervelt often takes his son to Cal Anderson Park on Capitol Hill in Seattle, dutifully checking in to Foursquare. He's the park's mayor.

That's why it was so disturbing to him to see his own picture plastered on trash cans and light poles in the park on small signs captioned "Meet The Mayor". Strangely, it doesn't appear to have been done by Foursquare. (I've contacted them for a response.) Update: Foursquare had nothing to do with it, they say! [via David Gallagher]

Rob Beschizza

TomTom touts "subtle swirls" on special edition satnav

TomTom's 'White Pearl' special edition navigator has for the driver who "likes a touch of glamour in their car" and will be available for £180 or thereabouts from British retailer Widget and Amazon.co.uk. [via Engadget]

Joel Johnson

Map: Band of Brothers set, Hatfield, UK

View Larger Map

Band of Brothers, the best WW2 series ever made, was shot primarily at the airfield outside of Hatfield, England. The sets are still standing and are visible on Google Maps.

I know where I'm when I'm next in the UK. (Which should be soonish; my pop just moved over there.)

Joel Johnson

"Map the Fallen" honors military deaths in Google Earth

Noah Shachtman:

Google Earth developer Kevin Welch has put together something truly remarkable for this Memorial Day. It's called "Map the Fallen," and it "uses Google Earth to honor the more than 5,700 American and Coalition servicemen and women that have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Xeni Jardin

BB Video - Miles O'Brien Reports: An Astronaut Climbs Everest (with a GPS Assist)

In this episode of Boing Boing Video, guest contributor Miles O'Brien, the veteran space and science reporter formerly with CNN, speaks with astronaut Scott Parazynski as he attempts to summit Mt. Everest.

Parazynski and his team are scheduled to actually attempt the summit within the next day or two, as I understand their current plans.

They are using a personal satellite tracking device called "Spot" as a security measure. The GPS device has the added benefit of providing digital breadcrumbs of data that can be used to generate real-time maps of exactly where they are on the trail.

More of Miles "1337" O'Brien's work at True/Slant, and you can (and should) follow him here on Twitter.

Astronaut-turned-climber Scott Parazynski's Everest climb blog is here, and you can also follow him on Twitter, live from Nepal.

Below, a screengrab of their current coordinates -- and a snapshot of Scott at rest on Mount Everest. After the jump, more photos.

(Previously: Boing Boing Video: Welcome, Miles O'Brien!)

READ THE REST

Joel Johnson

Google Street View Tricycle

Joel Johnson

Reviews you can use: "Why TomTom Sucks"

It's so nice when a product reviewer gives you a sweeping discouragement against an entire brand, like Wilson Rothman has done as he sticks a finger in GPS maker TomTom's eye, listing everything he's ever hated about their products—and still hates, because they've never fixed the issues.

No sarcastic here. Above the fields of myopic product reviews from thumbwrestling gadget hacks, these are the sort of statements that filter up to the consuming masses: TomTom sucks; just buy a Garmin. That's powerful mojo, as the phone call that Wilson is surely receiving from the TomTom PR stoolie right now will attest.

Joel Johnson

"Here & There": Manhattan on a ringworld

"Here & There" is a project from Schulze and Webb to try to find a better way to display projection maps of dense cities. It's Grand Theft Auto IV meets Halo.

They'll sell you two prints, one uptown and one downtown, for $65. (€45 in Europistan.)

Update: Here it is in motion, which definitely makes it seem like the sort of thing I'd like to have in a GPS.

Lisa Katayama

My mom Mary on her video game addiction, her stupid GPS, and the gadget she wished she had

This is my mother Mary. She lives in Japan, and for the most part, she has a pretty normal active mom life--goes to work, cooks dinner, throws parties, plays golf. But when it comes to gadget usage, she has some pretty quirky habits and, like most Tokyo-ites, has assimilated them seamlessly into her daily life (even though she still can't figure out how to plug a PlayStation into a TV). Keep reading to learn about her blingy new cell phone, how she met a kill screen in Brain Age, and how she hopes technology will solve her biggest burden.

Me: Where did you get your new cell phone?

Mom: It's actually a big sticker that I just cut out and stuck onto my old cell phone. I bought it at Daiei* in Kobe a few months ago. The model number? I don't know, I'm looking at it with binoculars but I can't see. Oh, it's a Sony Ericsson. The Au KDDI W62S. I think the color is pretty.

Me: Tell me about that video game you were addicted to.

Mom: It's just a stupid side game in Brain Age. There's a pair of squares or circles, I forgot which. They're different colors, and whenever there are four together they disappear. Once they all disappear, new ones come out. But it's gone already. If you it play too much it disappears.

Me: What do you mean it disappears?

Mom: It says your memory is full so you can't play this game anymore.

Me: How many hours did you play it for?

Mom: 40 minutes every day just to relax, before going to bed. I think it's like how people who smoke have a cigarette. But now that it disappeared, I just watch TV. That game gave me shoulder pains and bad eyesight, though, so I guess it wasn't actually that relaxing. Now I stretch while I watch TV--I think that's better for me.

Me: What's your favorite game on the Wii?

Mom: I only play the Wii when your brother comes over. My favorite game is Mingorufu.** I haven't played it for years because I don't know how to set it up with the new TV, but I liked it because it gave me a good sense of strategy in real life golf.

Me: What do you think of your car GPS?

Mom: I use it when I go play golf, even if I know how to get there. Sometimes it's really stupid and I know the streets better than the machine. Your dad and I are always saying to the GPS, "You're so stupid. You don't even know the back roads."

Me: What's one gadget you wish you had but don't own yet?

Mom: I wish I had a machine that would sort all my pictures of you and your brother in chronological order just by looking at them and then put them in albums or on the Internet. Because as you know, I'm reorganizing all my pictures, and it's a big pain. If someone invents it, will you please call me right away?

*the Japanese equivalent of Walmart
**Japanese name for Hot Shots Golf, which she has for PS3.

Joel Johnson

Garmin Oregon 550T hiking GPS is just a phone away from full convergence

Handheld GPS units for hiking and such are a dying breed—this is a job for phones!—the Garmin Oregon 550T proves the point by smooshing a 3.2-megapixel camera into its converged body. But the $600 Oregon 550T (or the $500 550 model that forgoes topographic data) does one thing that iPhone and Pre cannot: it has an altimeter.

Joel Johnson

GolfLogix GPS-8, a navigator for golfers

If I am to presume that the "8" in the "Garmin GolfLogix GPS-8" is a model number, implying that there have been seven previous GolfLogix models, I must then refrain from making fun of a device that is designed to golfers the distance to the next hole or how far they have to go to get over that sand trap—clearly people have been buying enough for a new model.

Over 23,000 golf courses are inside the $300 device, which as far as I can tell cannot be used as a hiking or driving GPS.

Joel Johnson

Review: A month and a half with the Pioneer AVIC-F500BT GPS Navigation System (Verdict: Exceedingly Okay)

The Pioneer AVICF500BT—we'll call it "AVIC"—does nearly everything you could ask of a dash-board navigation system: route you around via GPS; integrate with your iPod to add touchscreen controls; even control your phone via Bluetooth. And if it excelled at any of those functions, it'd be a steal (I picked it up for $200, shipped).

But it doesn't. It is the definition of good enough, but in a market crowded with inexpensive GPS units, the AVIC overreaches. And with modern phones able to handle all the duties of the AVIC—even the iPhone will get turn-by-turn navigation options by the middle of this year—it's a tough product to recommend.

Still, I like mine, even with its jumble of wires stringing off of my dashboard. One for power from the cigarette lighter. (Essential, as the AVIC's tiny rechargeable battery powers it for maybe half an hour before conking out.) One for the optional $35 USB cord that connects to the iPod. (In my case, an iPhone 3G.) One for the line-out to connect to my stereo. It's square-cornered and well-built. It feels like a quality bit of car-tech, not a bubble-shaped toy. And its best feature, a bright, nearly 6-inch touchscreen, is pleasant to touch and even more pleasant to view while driving.

I used the AVIC on my cross-country drive from Brooklyn to Oregon. After learning how to balance the music level with the navigation voiceover, it stayed on the entire time. In its permanent place in my car now, however, I just plug the iPhone directly into my stereo; the AVIC's built-in speaker is loud enough to project the voice directions and it saves me the trouble of waiting the 30-60 seconds the AVIC needs to slurp up the iPhone's music database every time I plug it in. (Something that works surprisingly well, all said, although it's nowhere as easy to use or as fluid in animation as the iPhone itself.)

It fails a lot, though, especially when booting up. There are times when I have to turn it off completely a couple of times to get it to recognize the GPS satellites. Or at least I presume that's what the snag is. It'll often just hang for a couple of irritating minutes with no real-time update of where I actually am on its maps.

And it feels underpowered, especially—and I know this makes no real sense—considering how large the screen is. It's disconcerting to have something that looks so high-tech labor to animate a rotating 3D map faster than a few frames a second.

For a while I considered buying the optional $90 amplifier, ripping out my cheap car stereo head unit, and using the AVIC as the exclusive controls of my car. But I can already see its days are numbered. As soon as the iPhone gets a solid turn-by-turn option, one that will likely integrate seamlessly with the iPhone's music and phone functions, I'll probably be putting the AVIC on Craigslist and watching it recede into the distance along with other low-end gadgets that were subsumed by functions that my phone can increasingly perform well enough.

Mat Honan

Update: What was in the Bag? Win! (And Star Trek Pez doods)

You guys are fast. Five hours after I posted a geotagged photo here, cagey reader The Mad Creator (Bill to his friends) and his pal Mick tracked down where the photo was taken and sussed out my clue to snag the prize.

There were a few good explanations in the comments of how to find the location. You could also simply have posted it to Flickr, which would have dropped it on a map. But however you went about it, the key is in the exif data--essentially metadata embedded in the photo. When you turn on Location Services with an iPhone, it adds coordinates to the exif data with every glamor shot you snap. Later when you post the photo to a blog, for example, or email it to your boss, anyone else can tell where it was taken (at least approximately, it's an iPhone not a missile guidance system) by looking at the exif data.

Oh, man, I'm scared now. They know where I am. Hold me.

It seems like quite a few people were able to suss out the coordinates, and at least a few swung by Buena Vista Park (where San Francisco's dead still speak their names). Yesterday afternoon, I grabbed a seat nearby and watched at least two people casually stroll on the steps for entirely too long and peek, cautiously, into the hedges. (I'm talking to you, blue Nike shoes man, and you white messenger bag guy.)

But you couldn't just peek. You needed to plunge. Bill and Mick dove boldly into the bushes where others feared to plunge, and came up with fistfulls of Star Trek Pez doods.

For real, it was totally street. By the time they got there, it was pouring rain and dark. And Buena Vista Park isn't exactly Disneyland after sundown. I mean, unless there's some sort of Heroin Disney's Nodding Hepatitis Adventure ride I don't know about. Here's his account of his perilous plunge:

Allow me to introduce myself. I'm Bill, a software engineer for a startup in Palo Alto. I live in Menlo Park.

As soon as I read your post yesterday afternoon, I started freaking out. I wanted to leave work immediately (see my posted comment). I pinged my roomate, Mick, who works for yet another startup up in SF. Since no one had tracked down the cache by about 6:30, I scooted up to the city, grabbed Mick, and we headed over the Haight. The prospect of fully sodden shoes and a potential shivving from a wandering bum hardly deterred us. We located the spot using google maps on my iphone and looked around for about 15 minutes before I re-read your "7up times two" hint. So, Mick walked up the deduced 14 steps, and I reached over the little cement ledge trepidatiously (who am I, Indiana Jones?). Lo, I pulled my arm back grasping the object of our desire: a worn American Apparel bag -- JACK POT! I had given myself about 30% chance that I was the first geek in the geek-dense SF area to venture here, but I was elated to be the first to nab the prize. Thanks so much for putting this together!

Anyway, I put together some photos proving we discovered the treasure in the cached location, and then promptly staged a little drama using the pez dispensers. I realize these are "collectors" items, but they're not going to be worth much for another couple dozen years, so I figure I might as well enjoy them now.

Well, I hear you. Collectible or not, I jammed 'em in a bunch of bushes on Haight Street in a park where dudes cruise for handjobs and street kids throw empty beer bottles at cars. It's not like I was taking great care of them.

There are many more photos, just click through to the full entry. Note that Spock speaks in Helvetica.

READ THE REST

Mat Honan

What's in the bag?

I know what you are thinking: Why is there a Jack Spade manbag on this gadget blog; what do manbags have to do with gadgets? Or perhaps: This guest blogger stinks like an old fishshack full of dead woodchucks, when will he go away?*

I wrote a story on location awareness in the February issue of Wired. I've been writing about GPS for about nine years (I think my first piece was for Macworld in 2000) and I haven't gotten bored with it yet for one simple reason: it's hella fun. Location awareness can do all sorts of neat things for you—help you find your way home, locate your friends, find traffic cameras, get you a taxi get you laid—but at its heart it's just about adding location data to things that are already familiar to make them more useful. Which brings us back to the photo above.

What's interesting about this picture isn't the bag itself; it's what's in the bag. And moreover, it's what's in the photo, which reveals where the bag is. You've likely heard of geocaching, but if not, think of it as a sport (in the broadest sense of the word) where nerds leave things for other nerds to find them, using only coordinates. The photo above has GPS data embedded in it, because I took it with an iPhone. What's in the bag is a prize. It's not a great prize, but it's a prize that some people might really like. The prize is wrapped in an American Apparel bag (to keep it from getting wet) and has one of my cards stuck down inside it, so you know you found the right thing. What's it worth? I have no idea. It's a collectible, given to me as a gift (thanks Mom!), but it was something I did not particularly want. Yes, it has been opened and re-sealed, which may thwart its eBay value, but really, if that's a concern you're being too pedantic. It's a prize, dude! A major award!

To find the prize, click on the photo above to download the man-sized version. Since it has GPS data embedded within, you can use that to figure out where I stashed said prize (which, as we've established, is in an American Apparel bag). And you'd better hurry because if you don't get it, the homeless army that lives closeby will. Make sense? Go find it.

Oh, and in case you need a hint, you can find one here.

UPDATE: Some people are finding the bag in the water close to North Korea. It is not close to North Korea. If it appears to be in North Korea, you need to be more negative (hint-hint).

*Friday.