You've heard us say before that when we're developing products we put them through extreme test conditions. We drop 'em, dunk 'em, freeze 'em, and heat 'em, and that's just a few of the tests engineering puts products through. We're proud that our devices are rugged and can stand up to the challenges our customers give them – even accidental challenges. Here's a tale of one of those accidental challenges from Randy B. of Wasilla, Alaska:  

In the spring of 2008, I was riding my Ranger RZR out to Knik Glacier along the Knik River with my son, Nathan, and his friend, Tucker. I was easing into a river crossing to see how deep it was when the bank sheared off and I was sliding into six-feet of water. As I climbed on top of my roll cage to stay out of the water as much as possible, I watched my highly-treasured Garmin GPSMAP 76CSx – which was in the cup holder – float away. I couldn’t reach it so I had to let it go for the moment. After getting the RZR out of the river before towing it back to the trailer, we walked up and down the river several times trying to find the GPS but were not successful. That fall before hunting season, I chalked that event up to “stuff that happens” and moved on. Having had really great experiences with Garmin products in the past, there was no deciding what to buy as a replacement – I bought a Rino 520 because I liked having the added feature of the radio and polling to let me know where my son was.

I hadn’t given it another thought really until I got home from lunch one day in the summer of 2010. Walking in the house, I pressed the button on the answering machine and there was a message saying, "If this is the guy that lost a Garmin GPS on Knik River, give me a call!" Can you imagine my surprise?  Two years later – REALLY? Of course I picked up the phone and called the guy right away who proceeded to tell me that he and his wife were walking along the river with their dog a couple of weeks previous and he saw my GPS sticking up out of the glacial silt there. He dug it out of the sand-like goop and told his wife that he was sure it wasn’t any good judging by the fact that it was full of water and silt. Being an electronics enthusiast, he took it home and took the back off of it and washed it out with fresh water and spread it all out to dry for a week or so. After that, he screwed the back on it and stuck a few batteries in it, and said that my name and phone number came up on the welcome screen! HOLY SMOKE!! I could attest to the fact that Garmin products are tough because I have been beating them up in the boondocks of Alaska for over a decade but this took things to a whole new level. UNBELIEVABLE is all I can say!

While its appearance is a little rough from two years laying on an Alaskan river, I still use the unit today on that same RZR (although I did invest in a holder for it) and on my river boat, and it still works great.  If ever anyone questions the rugged durability of your products just tell them my story.

Source: Garmin
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Garmin handheld withstands the elements – lost and found 2 years later!

"Like the marathon, life can sometimes be difficult, challenging and present obstacles, however if you believe in your dreams and never ever give up, things will turn out for the best.” – Meb

 "For the everyday athlete, the biggest piece of advice is enjoy what you’re doing and work really hard at it. What you put in is exactly what you’ll get out of it. You’ll have results." – Desi

So you might not run recovery runs at under six minutes per mile. You might not have earned a silver medal. You may never finish on the podium at the Boston or New York City Marathons, let alone qualify for either. However, you might have WAY more in common with our two newest athletes, Meb Keflezighi and Desi Davila than you might think.

The great thing about the sport of running is that no matter how your genetics read you still have to put in the hard work. Both Meb and Desi are what hard work and dedication are all about. Meb, who ran at the collegiate level for the UCLA Bruins has won just about every distance event there is at some point in his career. He is one of the most down to earth and humble world class athletes out there, who has always expressed how important his family is to him. It was not only his silver medal in Athens (2004), his NYC Marathon victory (2009) or his other amazing on the track and the road feats that drew us towards him, it was his character and vision to use his success to promote healthy and active lifestyles.

"It’s just calm, calm, calm, relax, relax, relax." When you see Desi out on a run, one of the first things you'll notice is her eyes are always looking forward. If you took the planning and strategy in which a chess player executes and combined it with the strength of a lion, you would get the expression on Desi's face when out there battling the world's top runners. Desi ran her collegiate career for the Arizona State Sun Devils and like Meb has had victories and accomplishments across the board. Desi is quick to remind herself, "that nothing comes easy," and determination is the name of the game. 

Just like the careers of these two amazing athletes, Garmin too started at the line at one point and shot out of the blocks in a race toward our goals. We started with the Forerunner 201, and Meb started with a pretty sweet flat top (that's him on the right). We then moved on to the Forerunner 305, and Desi started her sports with that same intense expression (can you guess which one she is?)

Today, Garmin , Meb and Desi have grown, learned from past experiences and are leaders within their disciplines. We now have the Forerunner 210 and 610, and Meb and Desi are about to embark on the summer of their lives as they prepare for their next Marathon. Check back each week for insider training tips, nutrition advice and some running secrets from two of the top runners in the world and members of Team USA! Meb and Desi, welcome to the Garmin Family.

You can meet Meb and Desi this weekend at the Boston Marathon Expo where they will be signing autographs at the Garmin booth on Friday at 4-5pm EST. Also at the expo is Garmin athlete Josh Cox, who will be at the booth on Sunday from 2-3pm EST. Come stop by and say hi.

Source: Garmin
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"We’re Just Like You, Only Faster"

Whenever you try something that hasn't been done – such as last month's KC Cache Dash geocaching race and expo – it can be as much of a challenge measuring the success as it was to plan the event in the first place. There's no standard metric for analyzing the effects of a social media-based treasure hunt that raises money for local charities while the community learns about geocaching by trying it for themselves. (Or at least nothing came up when I typed all of that in my search bar.)

So in the two weeks since the KC Cache Dash, I've been trying to quantify what happened that day. But upon reflection, the stats would be empty without the smiles on the faces of those affected. So here's my best shot at explaining both the math and the meaning behind a day that connected many within our local community:

Success is helping dozens of children in Kansas City get a bed of their own, which Sleepyhead Beds can do with their share of the prize money. Success is hearing that Project Uplift's mission of bringing food and essentials to the homeless in our community just took a huge leap forward through the efficent route planning of a donated Garmin nuvi. Success is seeing so many of the kids I spoke with the previous week at the YMCA's after-school camps show up with their parents, all of them eager to learn more about how OpenCaching.com can fuel a healthy lifestyle. Success is being told by KidsTLC that "well over a thousand homeless, teenagers and kids will benefit from this event." Success is seeing Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts canvassing Garmin's campus with their parents looking for caches. And success is seeing these great nonprofits all in one place sharing their stories and their objectives with each other and the community – and everyone talking about working together even more.

As for the "competition" angle of the day, it was easy to understand the feel-good sentiment that everyone felt they came out a winner. When four avid geocachers from the area started teaching several of my social media friends about geocaching, the highlights came too quickly to count as they scoured the city in tricked-out Land Rovers to find caches, tweet about the action and raise awareness for their respective charities. The action heated up immediately when my social media counterpart at Kansas City International Airport personally offered up a $100 donation to the charity of whichever team made it up north and found the airport's cache first.

Then as they got a little muddy and sweaty, the teams learned a bit about the varying degrees of difficulty, terrain and awesomeness displayed for each cache at OpenCaching.com. And because we wanted to keep everyone on their toes, our "social media commentary desk" egged them on through "flash cache" challenges and smack talk, making the #KCCacheDash hashtag the top locally trending topic all day (impressively topping #KUBBall for one day during the Jayhawks' stellar tournament run). And with the final score of our scavenger hunt all but decided, we watched on the GTU live tracking as one team took a final shot at glory and a big payday, knowing that being even a minute late to the finish line would cost half their points. Check out the recap video embedded here and see whether their hail mary paid off.

Making it clear that this great day was a group effort, about a hundred Garmin colleagues volunteered at the event, all of them eager to teach newcomers about geocaching and how to use our outdoor handhelds to find adventure at OpenCaching.com. We had product designers illustrating the many stages of how a device goes from an idea into production. Engineers answered questions, many of which came from an 8-year-old that I'd met days before at a YMCA Camp who had countless queries about how the satellites see us from space and exactly what materials go inside the devices to make them all work. Not sure what our minimum age is for an internship, but I've added his name to the can't-miss list. Bringing all of those answers full circle, our product support experts – the same great folks who are so helpful when you call on the phone – came out to teach visitors how to build caches and begin geocaching on our on-site course that stretched for more than a mile. And many of my friends in communications took part by lending their creative talents or attending with their families.

I guess the best sign of success is that everyone – from the nonprofits and scouts to the cachers and volunteers – immediately afterward began talking about how we can make the event bigger and better, teaching more people about OpenCaching.com and improving more lives through charitable donations. Any time the first comments about Year One are focused on looking forward to Year Two, I'll take it as a win.

Oh, and a young Superman was there. That could be tough to top next year. But we'll try.

Source: Garmin
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Jake’s Journal: Measuring success in many ways at KC Cache Dash

Garmin (which now owns Navigon) just announced some new features for the NAVIGON app on iPhone and Android. For iPhone, starting later this spring, Navigon will provide street-level photo of users’ destination which they pull from Google Street View. We’re not sure if this is such a big deal since this street level photos of your destination were already available on your Android device if you used Google Maps or just your computer and this Street View photo some times does not help at all to get to your destination.

As far as improving the Navigon app on the Android side you’ll soon get the active lane assistant which provides animated views of complex intersections so you won’t miss a turn. Other improvements are the NAVIGON widget on your home screens to search for POIs, bluetooth integration for voice announcements, and a traffic check function.

Brought to you by your GPS navigation site NaviGadget.

Garmin’s Navigon adding Google Street View to their app

Source: Navigadget
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Authors Dimity McDowell and Sarah Bowen Shea were in Kansas City yesterday as featured guests for the 30^th birthday celebration of the KC Express women’s running and walking club. Hundreds attended the event, including a small tribe of Garmin females in fitness, mother runners and even one father runner. While many of us have drawn inspiration and sound training advice from the pages of their book, Run Like a Mother, or their Another Mother Runner blog, it was a different experience altogether to meet the women behind the words and share the camaraderie of so many other runners.

After a welcome from one of the founding members of KC Express, Mary Edwards, Sarah and Dimity opened with a video showcasing dozens of women after the finish of a large female-only race giving their “Today I ran for _______” statements. This instantly set the stage for what keeps us all moving forward — which happens to be lots of reasons, some big, some small. Throughout the evening, we heard the authors’ personal mantras for movement, like Dimity’s “Forward is a pace.” Both Sarah and Dimity encouraged us to run naked once in awhile — no music, no Garmin Forerunner, no worries. They did offer an apology to Garmin ladies in the audience, but we later assured them no offense taken. Any given lunch hour, you might glimpse a few Garminites “running naked” on the nearby trails, while engineers in testing mode could have up to four Forerunners on hand. Another piece of advice from Dimity truly resonated with me: “Don’t think, just go.” The kids may be whining and tugging at your tech shirt, but take it from these mother runners, you’ll be furthering everyone’s health and sanity if you just get going.

My own children and husband are well beyond nagging when I run away from home most every Saturday morning. They do, however, have some complaints if I linger a little too long in their presence post-run, pre-shower. I recently discovered a new reason to keep my “long run or race goes here” habit. Couple of weeks ago, I happened to be home on a Saturday morning. It was a glorious slice of the day, with sunlight streaming in our east-facing home’s windows and front door. A time of day I’m never, ever home. It was in that dawning light I made a disgusting discovery: dust, cobwebs and other homely phantoms that normally escape my sight. My remedy was simple and involved no elbow grease: I won’t be skipping Saturday runs for a while. Just please don’t take a white glove to any surface in my home. 

Garmin Blogger Justin, “Another Father Runner,” shared his thoughts from the evening: What a privilege it was to celebrate the KC Express club’s 30^th birthday last night and to be amongst so many positive and lively Kansas City women. Listening to the entertaining tales from Sarah and Dimity, it proved even further that runners, though they might all have unique motivation to lace up their shoes each day, all have that one common bond — living in the moment. One of many takeaways that I will be certain to pass on to my five-year-old daughter when she gets a bit older is, “Don't ever say anything to yourself you wouldn't say to a friend”! It gives me a great sigh of relief to know that my daughter will be raised in a community where there are such strong women who live to promote healthy and active lifestyles. Happy birthday to KC Express and a big thanks to anothermotherrunner.com.

Attendees had a chance to purchase Sarah and Dimity’s second book, “Train Like a Mother,” through KC bookseller Rainy Day Books. As they autographed copies, Sarah said this was actually the first time she and Dimity had held the final book in their hands. I now have a bit of a bedside dilemma as my “must-reads” stack up, but I truly can’t wait to dig a little deeper into this one. It looks to offer a healthy balance of training plans, mother-runnerly advice and a sprinkling of just for funs, like Dimity and Sarah’s “aid stations we’d like to see” sidebar. Two of my favs:

A station where, for a $50 donation to Girls on the Run, you could buy yourself splits that are a minute faster.

A station that’s the human equivalent of a car wash: You would pass through it on a conveyor belt as sweat, dried salt stains, pit odor, etc. were cleaned off your body, hair and outfit.

Source: Garmin
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Peg’s Posts: Another Mother Runner authors share insight, inspiration and laughs in KC

This phone is supposed to only cost around $250 and with its vibrant colors it should be very attractive to the young crowd. Nokia Lumia 610 is a Windows phone obviously running version 7.5. It has some pretty impressive specs for its price. Take for example the 5MP auto focus camera, 800Mhz processor, 1300mAh battery, LED flash, 3.7″ display quad-band GSM/EDGE/WCDMA connectivity. Other specs include 256MB RAM and 8GB internal storage.

As far as location capabilities Nokia Lumia 610 offers A-GPS, G-sensor, as well as a digital compass, and a 3-axis accelerometer. Which means you’ll have a great time getting your maps from Nokia Maps, and with Nokia Drive 2.0 you should be able to get turn-by-turn GPS driving directons.

Brought to you by your GPS navigation site NaviGadget.

Nokia Lumia 610

Source: Navigadget
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