I need to find someone with an A3 scanner here in Astana, as I intend to try out the GPS feature of my HTC TyTnII next year, here in Kazakhstan’s capital. As I could not find any decent digital maps, or even just scans of road maps, I tried scanning in a fairly recent poster a while ago. As it was a lot larger than A4, I tried to scan it in segments, then stitch them together. Unfortunately the task was not exactly completed well, and although it is usable by human eyes and standards, I know that using it a basis for navigating using Lat/Long will result in a lot of inaccuracies. Anyway, if anyone hears of a friendly company willing to do a high res scan of the map for me, I’d be very grateful.

As you may remember from my previous posts re. the HTC TyTn II, I already use a Global Positioning System device when I am in Britain. Although there are of course the usual horror stories of little old grannies mindlessly following instructions and driving their Nissan Sunny into a pond, or of being taken on 250 mile detours, I find the ability to chill out about exactly which junction I need to exit from on the motorway, or the location of speed cameras very useful. According to an article over at BBC News, Europe is planning the launch of a system to offer an alternative to America’s GPS. The table at the end of the article is the sort of thing I really like from the BBC - a neat summary of exactly what is on the table, and in this case at least, who each section will be aimed at.

I just wanted to show my readers a demonstration of my next toy It is called a HTC TyTn II and will be replacing some of my current equipment…

My current phone (an Orange C550 (a rebadged HTC Hurricane) which crashes and some buttons no longer work all the time.
My current PDA (a HP iPAQ 2210) with a non-functioning directional pad, faulty USB socket, a snapped battery cover and it also crashes.
GPS unit - my current one no longer gets a fix on satellites.
The TyTn II also has a built-in camera, which should be an improvement over my current phone’s. Though without a flash, I don’t think it will be completely replacing our current digital camera.
Anyway, have a play with the demo below, you can spin the model around, slide open the keyboard and tilt the screen.
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Its not quite a Jaguar… OK, enough of Madness’ lyrics wedged into this post for now.
As you may have guessed this entry will be on cars. More precisely, what you can do to protect your investment, should the worst ever happen and your pride and joy be stolen.
GPS tracking systems allow you, and the relevant authorities in your area track exactly where your car is. Not only does this provide peace of mind, it often helps track down where the thieves are, and if they can be caught in the act, help to secure a prosecution, put them up for some jail time, and there by prevent further motor crime in your area!
Such systems are also used more passively, where companies need to keep track of their fleets, ensuring maximum efficiency in their tasks. Combine this with knowing that your children aren’t crossing any state lines when they should be at their friend’s house studying, and you can begin to see the versatility of such GPS tracking systems…

Now that I have my GPS systems sorted for Amsterdam (we will have TomTom Navigator on the PDA, GPS Tuner also on the PDA, and TomTom Mobile and a couple of basic GPS apps on the Smartphone), one positive side effect will be having a navigation system ready to use in Britain, should I end up hiring a car for any of the long journeys. (If it costs the same to hire one as a coach or train ticket, I may well do this, as I have not driven in 9 months, and sort of miss driving, especially in a country where people have at least a semblance of lane discipline ). What with the speed camera database installed on the PDA, the only other item I could do with is a a href=”http://www.escortradar.com”>radar detector to ensure I am aware of any mobile speed detection units on the road I am travelling on at the time. Obviously this would be for interest only, as I never go above 70mph on Britain’s motorways.

Yep, 14 and a half days, and I’ll be waiting to board the plane from Kaliningrad to Amsterdam. I have checked with the hotel about their luggage storage facilities, and all is OK there. (I can not check into the apartment they own until 5pm, and Alex & ChrisD arrive 4 hours after me anyway.) I have tried updating a couple of GPS related PDA programs, with varying success. As I do not want to risk losing the use of the older versions, I will leave trying to fix the problems (related to .NET Framework issues) until I am back in Kazakhstan, in five and a bit weeks. I am sort of itching to sort the problem now, but I know from experience that if something works, it is best to leave until the need is not there before attempting un-necessary upgrades. Anyway, I need to double check on a few forums that I have made fair and accurate summaries of what, where and how much to spend in Amsterdam, and then make sure the data is replicated across the PDA, Smartphone and real world paper and ink No flat battery is going to throw this break into a mess for me I discovered that there was no point in checking for Java based GPS applets to install on my Sony Ericsson K700 (my backup phone that will have my UK SIM card in it) does not allow access to bluetooth services through JARs, unfortunately. Given that Alex is bringing her (newer) Smartphone as well, and the installation files I need are on my mini-SD mem card, I guess I’ll just have to survive somehow

Whether your company needs to know where their valuable assets are at any point in time (be they transport and their drivers or stock), or as a parent you want to know where your child is, location based services have moved beyond the scope of only FTSE100 companies or police forces. A few years ago I experimented with a program called CellTrack which detected which cell tower your mobile phone was closest to, and then relayed that information to a central server. Sadly the project appears to have stopped development; however, TruePosition appear to have picked up the baton, and taken the concept a great deal further with their U-TDOA technology.

As an example, the last time I used such location tracking services (CID based I believe), you were only able to detected in which approximate area the phone was in. Now, thanks to clever use of existing technologies, accuracy has increased a great deal. If any of my English readers watch ‘The Bill’ you will already have a rough idea of how the phones are tracked, with triangulation from any three cell towers being the most basic mode of operation. However, there are circumstances where three reference points (in this case, cell towers) are not available. If you were to travel through a remote area, on a motorway, you may well find that the cell towers are positioned in a straight line running alongside the road. This obviously makes traditional triangulation an issue, however with the use of Angle Of Arrival calculations, only two transmitters are required.

Of course, there are times when you may either need higher accuracy, or when only one cellular tower is in range of the phone being used to track your valuable asset. In these circumstances, a Global Positioning System comes into play. As you may have noticed from my Amsterdam posts, I already play with a GPS unit with my PDA and SmartPhone. The versatility is quite impressive, and the ability to achieve a 3D fix with just 4 satellites in view mean that you can be reassured that the quoted location is very accurate.

To get the best of both worlds, a Hybrid solution is required. In cities with many tall buildings, obtaining a reliable GPS fix can be an issue, so this is where the aforementioned U-TDOA and similar approaches (check the link for a comprehensive guide to just how it all works) come into play. When you need higher accuracy, or mobile phone towers are not in such abundance, GPS can really help track your assets down. When you combine the two systems together, you end up with a higher accuracy and coverage service. Personally, I like the idea of being able to use technology your child already has (a mobile) to make sure they are safe, and where they are supposed to be. I would not like to use the service without the child’s consent, but I can see it helping keep children safe, and parents reassured.

As you may remember from my previous posts in the Amsterdam category, I have been using a combination of Google Earth, Microsoft’s Windows Live Local and other online mapping utilities to locate the best destinations for upcoming trip. Combined with some photos and reviews, I have been calculating the Latitude and Longitude for each, to add to my PDA’s GPS software.
Well, there is a forum for Microsoft’s Virtual Earth and Windows Live Local service users and programmers to come together and discuss a wide range of topics on this topic. User’s of the the MapPoint software are also welcome, and the forum looks like it will be a good place to discover all the facts about the soon to be released MapPoint 2008 app.

As you may have gathered, I recently spent quite a long time collating information on Amsterdam, from which bars serve the best beer (for ChrisD), to which CoffeeShops (CSs) sell the best, ermmm, coffee (?). Anyway, part of this process involved me using the forums I previously posted about, a fair few Google searches, Google Earth and anything else I could lay my hands on to discover the exact locations of the good CSs, in terms of Latitude and Longitude. Once entered into Google Earth, I exported them as KML files, and imported them into the GPS Tuner PDA application I mentioned a while back. Now I have nearly completed this stage, would there be any interest from this blog’s readers in those files? I still need to tidy up the names, if they are to be used by other people, but I can’t be bothered, TBH, if there is no interest. So, I’ll give it a fortnight, if you would rather not publicly state your fondness of smoking, feel free to e-mail me (addresses are posted on the Contacts page, link at the top here), and I’ll not mention any names if you prefer.
At some point, I will be publishing a summary of the research, including non-smoking-related information, so don’t think this is exclusively for lovers of the green stuff.