The iPod/Nike kit is a really interesting use of some fairly new technology made really easy for most any person to just pick up and start using. Based on experimenting by devs/hackers, they’ve figured out how to pick up the RFID connection through their own devices, something that was very apparently possible from the moment the kit was announced.

There are all kinds of really neat things you can do with such a simple tracking device for pedometry (relative distance when GPS/cell geolocation falls out), location (you are at any number of places a sensor station is setup), tracking devices in races (they use expensive/proprietary tracking devices now), and so on.

But leave it to the media to do a hype piece and scare tactic on the cool technology. Here is a CNN video on the “bad things” you can do with it.

While the information and knowledge is good, they could have done better in talking about how useful it is, the potentially good and interesting things you can do with it, but also be aware of…

Honda is showing off a new GPS with weather info and social networking system (via Engadget). This is a lot like Goole & Volkswagon’s proposed nav system.

What is really exciting is the ability to load up personal POI. For example, I am going on a road trip and want to get all my favorite restaurants, WiFi locations, friends’ houses, and hiking trails for Michigan and sourthern Canada. This could be a GPX file, or GeoRSS feed from Mapufacture.

The Garmin Nuvi supports this using their POI Loader, which will take a GPX or CSV file and load it onto our GPS. The Nuvi looks really great, but is an external solution. Built-in navigation systems offer better integration into the interior and usually better sensors. For example, my Prius (Akius) has in-wheel hub sensors for integrating distance traveled when GPS isn’t available. Now if only the in-car navigation systems (which cost a bundle more, on an order of magnitude) offered similar functionality, upgradeability, and best of all: hackability.

Mobile GIS is becoming more interesting and easy to get into. Yesterday Navicore released their navigation software for the Nokia 770.

Maemo Mapper is a free and open-source mapping application, designed from the ground-up for the Nokia 770. However, a large caveat is that it uses GoogleMaps in what is probably a violation of the terms of service (realtime navigation and downloading), not to mention annoying in that you have to “pre-drive” your route to cache the appropriate GoogleMap tiles.

GPSDrive now supports OpenStreetMap for downloading free maps.

I’ve gotten slightly involved in the new GeoClue project - an effort to provide an easy “location service” backend for devices. The location on the device may be served up by GPS, WiFi, GeoIP, Mobile Cell/GSM, or even just the user clicking on a map or entering an address. Then, an application can subscribe to the location service and get updated with the current location of the user/device and use it as appropriate.

At FOSS4G I attended a BOF (Birds of a Feather - people interested in the same stuff) on Mobile GIS. The software and technology all exist, it just needs some coordinated efforts to define the use cases, interfaces, and approaches. However, one solution won’t fit everyone. There are users who want to do “real GIS” in the field and there are users who want to do “neogeography” to say, find the nearest coffee shop on their mobile.

When Flickr added built-in mapping of photos, many rejoiced. However, it can be tedious to go through hundreds/thousands of photos and dropping them on a map. The User Interface for the Flickr Maps is really great - however, with this many photos, it would just take forever.

In addition, your photos are only geotagged in Flickr - and therefore not easily usable outside the service. The better way to geotag your photos is to actually write the Geo data to the EXIF of the photo. Then the metadata is carried around with the photo itself (until you pass it through some mean, metadata chomping machine like Photoshop).

The way I geotag my photos is to first get the coordinates of photos:

1. Carry around a GPS and store the tracks as GPX files - then you can mesh the GPS with the photos using WWMX (Windows), GPSPhotoLinker (Mac), or various scripts in Linux (fend for yourself, but check the geowankers mail archive)
2. Mark GPS Waypoints - or lookup addresses of locations and use MultiMap to get the latitude/longitude of these points
3. Guess

After I’ve either meshed up my coordinates, or have a list of locations, I fire up iView Media Pro, or iPhoto, and use my Applescript scripts in addition to ExifTool to actually write the GPS metadata. Because photo editing applications (like the aforementioned Photoshop) are usually very mean and don’t restore geo-metadata on edit and save, I suggest you edit all your photos first, and apply the geo Exif as the last step before uploading.

Now that you’re going to upload your photos, you first need to make sure Flickr uses these geotags for actual mapping. Enable Flickr to read your Geo EXIF tags. If you already have uploaded photos with geo-coordinates in the Exif data, Flickr will add these to the map (after a short wait - queueing and all).

You can my Flickr Photo Map, and you should go take some photographs! (especially for Pentax Day)

RouteBuddy is a new GPS and mapping program of Mac OS X. It looks really slick, with a nice interface. They even promote the use for in-car navigation and mapping.

It’s a little expensive, at $100, plus about $50 for each set of maps you want to buy for it. It seems like for $100, you should at least get 1 set of maps for free to start. This kind of pricing isn’t really aimed towards a hobbyist or someone who just wants to ‘play around’ with maps.

There are numerous other mapping solutions for the Mac, none with as smooth an interface, but run much cheaper with similar functionality. Here is a quick list as well as their own blurb and pricing.

USGS Topo!

View any point on the topographic map in 3D or draw a route and see a 3D fly thru of your route. $60

GPSUtility

GPSUtility displays GPS data including speed, bearing, position and satellite information. Free

GPSy

connects your Macintosh to a broad range of Global Positioning System (GPS) navigational units and has advanced mapping, logging, and data transfer features. $50

TrueNav GPS and Go

Expand your digital hub by connecting global positioning system (GPS) devices. Experience the wealth of information that GPS devices are able to provide to your Macintosh. Include location information with your data. $50

MacEnc (by GPSNavX)

charting and navigation application that allows the use of the free NOAA S-57 ENC marine charts on your Mac. $99.95

GPSRouteX

auto-sequencing GPS route navigation application for Mac OS X. Full support for GPSd, import/export Google Earth KML files, import/export GPX files, create your own routes and waypoints, even use your laptop with Google Earth driving directions to give you spoken, “turn-by-turn” driving directions! For a more complete description, check out the feature list.$29

GPSNavX

for the boater that wants to take the Macintosh aboard for real-time display of position on full color marine Softcharts and BSB raster charts.$60

Mac GPSPro

transferring Waypoints, Routes, Tracklogs, and GPS satellite Almanacs. MacGPS Pro works with almost all brands of GPS receivers for a real-time display of GPS information on a moving map on the Macintosh screen. It allows import of maps from a wide variety of sources. These maps can be viewed with no GPS receiver connected, or used in real-time as a moving-map display of your current position and velocity. $50

TopoDraw

allows you to draw new waypoints and tracks directly onto a 2D map simply by pointing and clicking. You can also use TopoDraw to present navigation data gathered with your Garmin GPS unit on a 2D map.$12.95

Route66

contains more than 6,500,000 streets in the US & Canada, ROUTE 66 Route USA 2004 contains no less than 4,000,000 Points of Interest in over 60 categories like hotels, restaurants and petrol stations, most of which together with their addresses and telephone numbers. What is more, ROUTE 66 Route USA 2004 also provides support for GPS, enabling you to establish your exact location using satellite navigation and ensuring that you will never lose your way again.$40

TerraBrowser

Terrabrowser is an internet browser for satellite photos and topographical maps which are obtained from the Microsoft Terra Server. $15

RoadNav

Roadnav is an in-car navigation system that can run on a variety of operating systems like Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X.
Roadnav can obtain a car’s present location from a GPS unit, plot street maps of the area, and provide verbal turn by turn directions to any location in the USA. Roadnav uses the free TIGER/Line files from the US Census Bureau to build the maps, along with the GNIS state and topical gazetteer data from the USGS to identify locations. Free

Trail Runner X

TrailRunner is a route planning software for all kinds of long distance sports like running, biking, hiking, inline-skating, skiing and more, with geographic display of your workout area. Exports to cellphone or iPod Nano. Free

There are also some nice frameworks and utilities for working with GPS:

MacGPSBabel

utility for converting between GPS formats

FourCoordinates

Cocoa Framework for interfacing with GPS devices

GPSd

daemon that allows multiple connections to a GPS unit, GPSdX is a Mac-specific version

NoSweat

interface to the Garmin Forerunner

gps2gpe

GPS to GoogleEarth converter

LoadMyTracks

LoadMyTracks downloads Tracks, Routes, and Waypoints from GPS receivers (including those from Garmin, Magellan, and Timex) to your Macintosh. From these, it can create GPX files (for use in software that understands GPS output) or KML files (for use with Google Earth and Google Maps).

I’ll try and do an overall review of the various applications later.