Why do we buy GPS software?

The new TomTom ONE all in one navigation system is currently retailing for £199 (and can be got for less if you shop around). For that money you get the maps for your region, built in SiRFstar III GPS Reciver, cradle for the car plus charging lead, TomTom Navigator software and a screen that works perfectly in direct sunlight.

If you want to purchase TomTom Navigator for your PDA you are looking at £80 for the software, £60 for the GPS Receiver, £20 for the PDA charging lead and £20 for the windscreen cradle. Total- £180.

If you want something different you can get Navicore Personal for £100 (+£100 for the receiver, charger and cradle) total £200 or Route 66 for £100 (+ the bits mentioned above) total £200.

Am I missing something here because besides the ability to advance plan a trip (as you always have your phone with you) you get the advantage of no crashes, more expansion card space and a device that is ultra stable and usable in all conditions.

The Compass / Party Phone

Two more E61 applications have popped up at All About Symbian. The Compass is described as follows and is… wait for it… $34.95! “Compass will help you to difine azimuth and elevation of sun and moon. Just enter latitude, longitud, time offset and you will get all information about them. This program is just for fun and your pleasure.”

Party Phone is a lot cheaper and all I need to do now is work out what it does exactly. “Stand out from the crowd! Download Party Phone now and make yourself noticed! Ideal for parties and concerts! Also useful for signaling your presence, lighting your path or entertaining babies… Party Phone is designed to make your phone look cool. You can control different parameters such as the backlight and vibration. The menu is easy to use and well structured. As a bonus, a “flashlight” mode is included. The vibration can be turned on and set to run continuously or for a specific amount of time, at regular intervals, thus creating a pulse-like effect. You can select between two backlight modes - Flash and Fade. Both can be set to run continuously or periodically, according to your desire.”

ZYB

ZYB may be of interest to those of you looking for a free online back up tool- “The service is free and works with more than 200 different phone models. It’s very simple to get started, just sign up on zyb.com, select your mobile phone model and in a matter of seconds you will receive a message (SMS) that automatically configures your mobile to your ZYB profile. Once configured, the mobile is now ready to be synchronised with ZYB. No installation of software required. After the first synchronisation the mobiles contacts and calendar can be edited from the user’s personal profile on zyb.com and all changes can be copied directly to the mobile.

ZYB allows users to store an unlimited number of contacts and calendar entries and access them online from anywhere in the world. As such ZYB also works as a backup, so if a user is unlucky and loses his mobile, all he has to do to get his data back is to sync a new mobile with his ZYB account.

 “Most of us don’t memorise more than a small fraction of the phone numbers we store on our mobile. So it’s no wonder why people dread losing their phone. ZYB puts an end to this worry”, says Tommy Ahlers, CEO and co-founder of ZYB.

But the easy online backup is only half the story of ZYB. When people have backed up their mobiles, they can start sharing their contacts and calendars with other ZYB users.”

How do I get into the Zone?

I re-activated my Bt Openzone account today so that I could pick up emails and browse the Net through the hub that we ave at work.

To date I haven’t even attempted to use WiFi on the E61 but what a pain it is setting it up! Any of you clever readers have a quick set up guide that will enable me to set it up to work with BT Openzone?

Route 66 still flawed, reviewed for S60 3rd Edition

All About Symbian have posted a review of Route 66 and they mention a certain problem that has caused great discussion here- “First impressions are bad in that the CD-based installer is buggy, refusing to install the application onto any of my 1GB or 2GB expansion cards. In the end, I managed to get it to install Route 66 to a smaller 512MB MMC card and then I manually juggled these files into a corner of my main 2GB card. In fact, given that the installer also formats the card and wipes any files you do have lying around, this juggling is just as well, but the procedure is inelegant to say the least.

Activation is by SMS and worked well for me, letting the application work within a minute of installation. Not much seems to have changed to the interface and menus of Route 66 over the years. This is partly a good thing, as I was immediately at home, and partly a bad thing as it means that there’s a fair chance that most of the problems haven’t been fixed either.”