Thanks to Gizmodo, Reuters, and Derek (no link), we're now aware that TomTom has a working version of their navigator for the iPhone. It's going to be an interesting couple of months.

Just in time for Memorial Day, Google announced (using the LatLong blog) a new Google Earth Browser Plug-in, which "[brings] the full power of Google Earth to the web." Unfortunately, it works under Windows only, so those of us on Macs will presumedly have to wait a while.

For those of you who use our LoadMyTracks program along with the Sony CS-1 (or similar) device, you'll have noticed that for a large portion of the last year, it has been nearly useless. From 10.4.9 on the device hasn't worked correctly on some machines, and as of 10.5 it didn't work with any. Well, the waiting is finally over as Apple's new 10.5.3 works great with LoadMyTracks and the Sony CS-1.

This is more art than science, but there's an article from CNET that describes an attempt to create the largest "drawing" in the world by using a GPS device in an package shipped around the world. Followed by today's article that it was a hoax.

My brother Derek pointed me at this article from CNet about a move by ESRI to more directly and easily support export from ESRI formats to "the geoweb." Now, considering that this is mostly KML, I'm not particularly surprised, since KML is basically a presentation and not analysis format. Would that they were adding more support for WFS!

It's been a while since we talked about LoadMyTracks, software from ClueTrust (our sponsor) and there've been a lot of changes in the past few months. Since March, we've been doing a lot of development, and adding support for a lot of new devices, including the latest from Garmin, and some old standbys from Magellan (serial-based receivers now), as well as a new crop from GlobalSat, including the GH-615 Sport Watch and the DG-100 Data Logger (which US GlobalSat was kind enough to send us for development purposes). Click the link for more...

The folks who keep Open Street Map thriving are having a conference in Limerick, Ireland in July to discuss the State of the Map. If you aren't familiar with Open Street Map, I'd encourage you to check it out, and then to get out your GPS and digital camera and get some data on the map! Most of the current US data is from the TIGER/Lines data set, and in my area of DC is pretty out of date.

A very interesting map from Ben Fry's website, including detail on the meaning and origin in this article. The map itself is made only of roads, no terrain features, no boundaries, just roads... all of the roads in the US. Best use of the TIGER/Line data set I've seen in years.

With all of the recent move to put cartography and GIS data on the internet, it should come as no surprise to readers of this blog that there are a lot of web sites out there with nice looking maps and data that everyone expects to be real. This is where people should stop to think about the source of the data.