dshen.com - My Gear

October 28, 2006

Garmin Streetpilot C550

I previously owned a Garmin Streetpilot C330. It served me well for over a year getting me to wherever I needed to go. But now out comes the Garmin Streetpilot C550. This one is much better!

Not only does it do GPS directions, it also has a MP3 player in it and, most importantly, a bluetooth speakerphone! As soon as I turn it on, the bluetooth speakerphone connects to my mobile phone and it's working. Through the GUI of the Garmin, I can access the phonebook and call history as well as directly dialing through its dial pad.

It's speakerphone is one of the best I've used. It is clear and loud, and the mike picks up my voice very well. A great implementation!

Buy it from amazon.com

Posted by dshen at 08:56 PM

June 05, 2006

Bones in Motion Cellphone GPS Tracking for Training

I haven't tried this yet, but this is really cool that it's worth posting about. Bones in Motion is developing mobile phone apps to take advantage of the GPS capabilities of the mobile phone to track your location, speed, and elevation using only your mobile phone!

The only have Sprint and Nextel phones now, but I hope they bring up Cingular soon.

Check it out here at BIM Active.

Posted by dshen at 08:43 PM

December 14, 2005

Garmin c330 Streetpilot

GPS is a godsend. Now that I am constantly out and about, trying to get to strange places for meetings and for eats, I find that the Garmin c330 Streetpilot is a constant companion on any trip. I can't believe that they have burned the entire US into its memory, and also added a Yellow Pages feature as well. The Yellow Pages feature isn't as complete as I would like it to be, but it's better than nothing.

What also amazed me was its Taiwan version. They actually were able to program in handwriting recognition so that you could write Chinese characters and it could do lookups based on that.

This unit is compact, very portable, and totally useful. Much better than an old Alpine I had which cost me about $4K for the entire unit and it took FOREVER to compute a route. This baby computes a route in less than a minute and is smart enough to deal with me not following the route exactly.