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

Just a few weeks ago at Macworld | iWorld 2012, we launched new social features for the Garmin StreetPilot onDemand iPhone app. Today, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, we announced new features for the NAVIGON smartphone apps. This includes a new Google Street View function for the iPhone version and an Active Lane Assistant for the Android app. Furthermore, the NAVIGON app will soon also be available for Samsung Bada phones and the Cisco Cius enterprise tablet.

Google Street View and Active Lane Assistant

Available later this spring, the new Google Street View feature for the NAVIGON iPhone app provides users a street-level image of their destination before starting a route, helping, for example, to identify a specific building upon arrival. NAVIGON Android user will be able to enjoy a whole range of new features that are included in an upcoming app update, such as the Active Lane Assistant, helping drivers prepare to make an upcoming exit or turn by providing an animated lane map complete with arrows and actual road geometry; a NAVIGON Widget that allows users to access certain functions of the app directly from the phone’s home screen, searching for a point of interest nearby for example; Bluetooth support for voice announcements; and a Traffic Check function, an easy to read at-a-glance gauge graphic that appears after route calculation alerting drivers of traffic conditions.

Soon also available for Bada and the Cisco Cius tablet

The NAVIGON app will soon also be available for Samsung’s operating system Bada. It will run on the Samsung Wave 3 and is planned to launch this summer in Europe, North America and Australia/New Zealand. Included are premium navigation features such as spoken turn-by-turn directions, real-time traffic rerouting, lane guidance and multiple route options. Available in the Samsung app store, the North America and Australia/New Zealand versions will sell for $49.95 and the European version for 49.95 euros.

In partnership with Cisco, users of the Cius business tablet will shortly be able to download the NAVIGON navigation app from the market place Cisco AppHQ. The onboard app saves the maps on the device, so navigation will work entirely without a data connection. The NAVIGON app will roll out in the U.S. first and later become available in Europe, Australia, Japan and China.

Find details about Garmin’s other smartphone apps for a wide variety of activities at http://garmin.com/apps.

Source: Garmin
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NAVIGON Apps to Get New Features, Become Available for New Platforms

Starting tomorrow, thousands of visitors will check out the latest in Apple-related products at Macworld | iWorld in San Francisco. Garmin offers a growing range of iOS apps spanning aviation, fitness, tracking, treasure hunting and turn-by-turn navigation that we will showcase at the show (booth #836). We will demo social search and check-in capabilities for the StreetPilot® onDemand navigation app as well as a new function for the Tracker™ app that allows users to share links to a live tracking map[1].

Here’s an overview of what you’ll be able to see if you’re there:

Check in with your navigation app: Among other new features, we will demo social media capabilities for the StreetPilot onDemand app that integrate Wikipedia, Facebook and foursquare. Users can easily display locations from these networks on the map and check in upon arrival at their destination. Clicking on one of the Wikipedia icons on the map will reveal detailed information about a location, such as the identity of an interesting building or landmark. Also new for the StreetPilot onDemand app are some fun features that make driving more enjoyable, such as a variety of voices or vehicle icons to choose from as well as visually refined 3D renderings of buildings to provide a better overview. The latest versions of the StreetPilot Onboard and the NAVIGON turn-by-turn navigation apps will also be on display. Garmin acquired the German navigation provider NAVIGON in 2011.

Track what’s important: The Garmin Tracker app tracks what’s important. The app works in conjunction with the GTU 10 tracking device to display its location on a map, making it easy to virtually follow anything, from your loved-ones to valuables or the family dog. Users can set up a geo-fence to get alerts when the device crosses in or out of a defined area. The latest version of this app now also allows a continuous tracking mode, and enables users to send out map links to others, so they can follow the location of a device too1.

Get fit with your iPhone: The Garmin Fit™ app turns the iPhone into a powerful training tool. The app keeps track of current walking, running or cycling stats. Users can easily upload, review and share their activities on Garmin Connect™, a vibrant online community of fitness enthusiasts. With an optional ANT+™ iPhone adapter, users can also pair this app with Garmin fitness sensors like a heart rate monitor, foot pod or speed/cadence sensor.

Go on a digital treasure hunt: The free OpenCaching app provides a fun way for families, nature lovers, hikers, or scouts to go outside on a digital treasure hunt. Geocaching, a popular activity worldwide, takes digital technology away from the couch and out on the trail. Hidden treasure troves – known as caches – have been hidden around the world. Their coordinates have been uploaded to online communities, such as the free website Opencaching.com, along with details and clues. Garmin’s app allows users to participate in this treasure hunting game by hiding, finding, logging and sharing cache information right from the iPhone.

An iPad app for pilots: Garmin’s roots are in the aviation business and today the company is a leader in this space. Garmin Pilot My-Cast℠  is an aviation-centric weather and flight planning application designed specifically for general aviation, corporate and commercial pilots. The app provides pilots with a paperless cockpit, weather and flight planning along with navigation.

To get an overview of our iOS apps, you can also check out the following video:

Source: Garmin
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Garmin® to Showcase Growing Lineup of iOS Apps and New Social Features at Macworld | iWorld 2012