MyMotion – GPS Tracking in Action

Well, I put MyMotion through a decent workout on Sunday – tracking my team’s position along a 60 mile bike ride from London to Cambridge. And as you can see, it did pretty well.

Where have you been?!?

I chose to export the routes to KML for now – included in the KMLs are the route – which thanks to my Kaiser’s GPS receiver, seem pretty accurate – and also pushpins for the distance and time intervals I set, which were 0.5km and every 90 seconds. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get more of the instantaneous speed information out by exporting to a more ‘purist’ GPS format, but for now, it’s quite cool being able to retrace the route we took the other day… and it was clear and sunny then, as well.

As for the stability - this has always been a problem, since running reliably for hours on end in the background isn’t something anyone who knows Windows Mobile would expect to happen. For this reason I saved and restarted the logging 3 times. And – two of the runs completed successfully. The middle route stopped half-way through, meaning I lost around 15 miles of the 60 in the middle of the route. Still – not as bad as you would expect. Turning off the Auto-Start/Auto-Stop settings on MyMotion seems to help as well.

Revo Blik Radiostation Review continued…

Well, I’m still playing around with the Radiostation, and have a few more comments to add…

Has it revolutionised my life yet? Well – I do have it on most of the time; it’s nice to have sound on, and I’ve been trying various stations on and off over the last few days. A friend who speaks Italian came round yesterday, so I put on a few Italian stations, which reminded us both of the times when we were over there – which was not quite revolutionary, but still very nice.

On the downside, I’ve still not tuned in to a station on any medium (DAB, FM, WiFi) that impresses with sound quality. I think that could be the stations in the case of WiFi, and I know DAB is much lamented, but I would have thought FM would be better. However, playing some MP3s from my PC, with the Radiostation plugged into my surround system, isn’t bad.

The buttons still annoy – a design where they could be laid out more intuitively, rather than all being identical, would have been preferable.

Also – I’ve been playing BBC Podcasts this morning, but found that after a while (15-45 minutes), one will pause, disconnect, and then restart… from the beginning. I’m hoping there’s a fast forward, or a config to store the last position (nope, I’ve still not read the manual), because otherwise, this is an absolute pain for anyone who regularly listens to podcasts.

Actually, they could have a fast forward/rewind – operated by jogdial, a’ la iPod. They could tune using a Jogdial.. select using a jogdial… Do away with every identical button on the damn thing and replace them with just a jogdial!

And.. that’s my thoughts on jogdials.

So – good. But not great.

When will you be able to send your location in Google Maps Mobile?

Because it’s a big deal.

How many times have you been trying to find someone; you’re in a city, and you don’t know how to get to the street they’re in; they can’t find a street name or building number to relay to you; or you’re at a gig, a festival, a show, and there’s no easy landmark you can use.

Wouldn’t it be great to have a “Send my location” feature? Just something that reads your position from your GPS, and puts it in an SMS, so you can send it to a friend… and then they can click on it, and see your (and their) position on a map.

Wouldn’t it be cool?

Well… there are problems for this. Quite a few on Pocket PC, and probably on other platforms too. But, chances are, even if you do have one, then your friend will have another one (or none at all), and they’re no use to either of you.

But you’ve both got Google Maps Mobile. Of course you do – everyone does!

So – given that we have almost a ubiquitous program on most people’s phones, that already allows you to look up a location or POI, and send the details as an SMS (but only the address; not the coordinates) – why can’t Google add a simple feature that gives you a “Send this location by SMS”. Or “Send MY location by SMS”.

They’ve already got the connectivity, the the mass market. All they need to do is add that little piece of code!

And then you won’t spend half your festival standing on a railing, holding your phone to your ear with one hand, and waving frantically with the other.