Visitors to the Grand Canyon can now rent a hand-held GPS device to help them find their way around the South Rim of the park.
They are scheduled to be available by July under an agreement between the Grand Canyon Association, a nonprofit association that supports visitor services at the park, and FUNfinder Inc., a Phoenix technology company.

The devices are designed to provide an easy way to navigate the Grand Canyon’s trails and roads, and they also offer information about lodges and educational amenities in the park.

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Consumers’ appetite for car navigation and Global Position Systems (GPSs) has become voracious, causing worldwide shipments of automotive navigation systems to more than triple from 2006 to 2012, iSuppli Corp predicts.

Since 2001, the automotive navigation market has transformed from being dominated by embedded systems installed in cars to being virtually taken over by Personal Navigation Devices (PNDs), which are handheld devices users can carry with them, as well as use in their vehicles.

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Tele Atlas announced today it has signed an agreement with BAKOSURTANAL, the government institution responsible for creating and maintaining large scale geographical maps in Indonesia.

Tele Atlas plans to incorporate BAKOSURTANAL’s digital maps within its existing Indonesia database by September 2007. The Indonesia map is part of a virtually seamless Southeast Asia map solution from Tele Atlas that includes extensive coverage of Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand.

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Fastrax Ltd., the provider of programmable iTrax GPS receivers as well as open and portable iSuite OEM GPS Software Development Kit environments, today announced the latest additions to its iTrax and uPatch product families.
Based on the ultra-sensitive SiRFstarIII (GSC3f/LP) chipsets and with 8Mbit internal flash memory, the new iTrax310 GPS receiver module enables high-performance navigation in the most stringent applications and a solid fix even in extremely demanding GPS environments.
The iTrax310 OEM GPS receiver provides the high performance levels of the iTrax300, including low acquisition sensitivity (-143dBm), navigation sensitivity (-158dBm) and power consumption (110mW at 3.0V), but with a 30% smaller form factor. iTrax310 receivers are ideally suited for both industrial navigation systems and battery operated consumer products such as handheld computers, vehicle navigation devices, sports accessories and mobile phones.

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As reported on a german news magazine (Focus), Apple Apple is working on a navigation system for cars.

Partnership will start in 2009 but after first 6 months, where it will be exclusively available from Mercedes, later the other vendors are allowed to follow.
The system would include an audio system, (doubt about Ipod interface?), and a navigation system
Apple is seeking to conquer every tiny space of our digital environment with computers, multimedia devices, mobile TV, Cell phones and next with navigation devices.

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Tele Atlas announced the availability of Tele Atlas places2protect, a premium product providing highly accurate location-based and property information on emergency medical services and critical access facilities and institutions, including hospitals, schools, daycare centers and government offices. Leveraging Tele Atlas places2protect, federal, state and local governments and commercial enterprises such as insurance and utility companies can integrate accurate location information into their mission-critical, map-based applications.

Tele Atlas places2protect provides relevant information for government officials, emergency planners and private companies developing emergency management applications or managing utility or pipeline assets. The product helps provide instant location and feature data for planning and preparedness and delivers up-to-date institution and location information. With Tele Atlas places2protect, detailed location information is accurately positioned on the map using Tele Atlas’ proprietary Address Points database, which is designed to pinpoint street addresses to a specific physical building, site or parcel.

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