In last week’s post, we told you about the importance of keeping your device software and upload applications up-to-date. Now that you’ve updated your device software and the ANT Agent (PC/MAC) and/or the Garmin Communicator Plugin (PC/MAC), let’s cover everything you need to know about Uploads. There are probably a few things we’ll point out here that will make things a little easier for you with future uploads.

Whether you have a USB device (e.g. Edge 705, Forerunner 305) or an ANT wireless enabled device (e.g. Forerunner 405, FR60) you’ll find the Upload page quite handy. When you first click on the Upload link and land on the Upload page you will notice that it does tend to cater more to the USB devices. While it is easy for USB device owners to simply plug in their device and click Upload new activities, there are other options for both USB device uploads and ANT Agent uploads in case you’re working with more than one device, or if something goes wrong with an upload.

If you are one of those fitness fanatics who likes to have more than one device while you’re out playing, you can easily switch between devices by clicking the Change link at the upper right hand corner of the Detected device box. This is also a handy tool for those of you who work with a USB device and an ANT-enabled device. One way you can upload from an ANT-enabled device is to choose the device from the Change list, then click Upload new activities. Any new activities will be uploaded as usual.

Another way to switch between devices or upload from an ANT-enabled device while using the Upload feature is to select Upload from a list. This is a great way to use the Garmin Communicator Plugin if the ANT Agent hasn’t uploaded your activities for whatever reason. Simply select your device from the list, then press Upload activities to retrieve your workouts. As with the Change list, this is also a great way to select uploads from multiple devices.

Finally, you can click Manual Upload to upload a file saved on your computer. This allows users with GPX devices to upload files from devices such as the eTrex. This is also one more way to upload for those of you with ANT-enabled devices. Simply follow the appropriate path to locate an activity file, select the file, then Upload. If you’re not sure where to find a file for wireless devices, here are the path options:

PC users – C:Documents and SettingsOwner or Current UserApplication DataGARMINDevices, click the numbered folder, then click History folder.
Vista users – C:usersusernameApplication DataLocal LowRoamingGARMINDevices, click the numbered folder, then click History folder.
MAC users – ~LibraryApplication SupportGarminDevices<device number>History. Files will be available for 30 days.

Sometimes updates to devices and improvements to the site may slip past even
the most diligent of Garmin Connect users. Today we want to highlight the
importance of keeping your ANT Agent and/or Garmin Communicator Plugin software
updated with the latest and greatest, as well as encourage you to keep your
device up-to-date with the latest firmware.

With each release of upload software there are important updates that may
correct bugs or add features that you will find useful and beneficial. As a
rule, updating your device firmware as well as the upload software will make for
smoother, faster uploads. Aside from general fixes and adding new features like
transferring your user profile to your device and adding the ability to send
Courses to your device, below are some of the most important updates and
solutions made to the ANT Agent and the GC Plugin:

ANT Agent

• Resolved communication problems during uploads when the device has old
  firmware installed.

• Improved communication of general upload errors.

• Improvements updating device firmware.

• Added ability to automatically find and download software updates.

• Added improved user interface for fitness activity transfers to Garmin
  Connect.

• Added multiple languages.

Garmin Connect Plugin

• Open JavaScript API, and available for use with other sites.

• Correctly report an error when a file download fails because of a lack of
  space on the device.

• Added a property to allow web sites to retrieve fitness data in compressed
  format. (That means uploads are faster!)

Need another reason to keep your device firmware, ANT Agent, or Garmin
Communicator Plugin up to date? By maintaining the latest software on your
device and your computer, you actually help yourself along with the entire
Garmin Connect community by ensuring faster uploads that don’t tax the rest of
the system. When you run the latest software you can be assured that the system
is running as it is meant to run for the latest release.

Updated ANT Agent:

ANT Agent Updates and Downloads – PC

ANT Agent Updates and Downloads – MAC

Updated Garmin Communicator Plugin:

Garmin Communicator Plugin – PC

Garmin Communicator Plugin – MAC

Device firmware updates can be found at Garmin.com under Product Parent (IE Into Sports, On the Trail) -> Group -> Device -> Software

Hello Garmin Golfers! Well, it appears a few of us have been pretty good this past year as we duffers have been delivered some delicious new treats over the holiday season.

If you haven’t heard the word, Garmin just released the hot new Stat Tracking software for Approach G5. And a few weeks back, we added Approach G3 to the lineup.

The G3 features the same ease-of-use as the G5 and more than 12,000 preloaded courses. Being a touch smaller and lighter than the G5, it’s perfect if you like to walk the course.

The new G5 Stat Tracking software (available for no charge here) lets you track your putts per round, fairways hit, GIR and how far you hit each club – and not just for you, but for every member of your foursome.

So you can now create a list averaging how far you hit each club which, in theory, should help improve your GIR. Or, in the case of this humble caddy, suggest a lesson or two is in order.

 

Finally, we also added a few thousand more course maps awhile back – and not just in the good ol’ US of A, but for Canada as well! As always, we’re continuing to map out Munis from Texas to Toronto, so check back in often to download the latest courses. (Word on the street is we’re making the jump across the pond to map courses in the Old Country, so stay tuned for details.)

Fans of the Twitter machine can follow @JakesJournal to stay up to speed on all things golf and all things Garmin. ‘Til next time, remember to practice putting on the carpet and chipping in the living room until the weather breaks.

If your goals for the new year include spending more time exploring and enjoying the outdoors, Garmin has new ways to enhance your adventures. Today we announced the Oregon 450t and Oregon 450 touchscreen GPS devices, the newest of Garmin’s next-generation outdoor handhelds now compatible with the online community at Garmin Connect as well as Garmin’s free Custom Maps utility for transferring paper or digital maps onto your compatible handheld.

“More than ever, Garmin offers intuitive touchscreen options for anyone exploring and enjoying the world around them,” said Dan Bartel, Garmin’s vice president of worldwide sales. “Oregon 450t and Oregon 450 provide a bridge between the slimmed-down Dakota family and the top-of-line Oregon 550t, all of which work seamlessly with Garmin Custom Maps in planning your adventure and Garmin Connect for reliving the experience and sharing the memories.”

Responsive to the touch of a finger, yet resistant to the rigors of nature, Oregon 450t and Oregon 450 simplify navigation through a glove-friendly touchscreen interface. This bright 3” color display is easier than ever to read and use in all conditions. Other key upgrades include user-selectable dashboards, enhanced track navigation, high-speed USB for faster map transfers with your computer, photo navigation and the 3-axis tilt-compensated electronic compass, which shows your heading even when you’re standing still, without the need to hold it level. The new dashboards give users the ability to customize the appearance of various pages on your Oregon, including the geocaching, compass, stopwatch and elevation functions. For hikers, cyclists and trail runners, the enhanced track navigation will prove especially useful. When navigating to a destination on an active track, users will see the changes in elevation ahead of them as well as where they’ve been. Also, waypoints and other key locations along the active route – such as start, end and high and low elevation points – now appear on the map and active route pages. The new Oregon units also include a barometric altimeter, paperless geocaching and wireless exchange of tracks, waypoints, routes and geocaches with compatible Oregon, Dakota, Colorado and Foretrex devices.

Both units boast a worldwide shaded relief basemap, and Oregon 450t adds preloaded 100K topographic maps for the entire United States and state-of-the-art 3D elevation perspective. Coverage on the 450t includes major trails, urban and rural roads, interstates, highways, coastlines, rivers and lakes as well as national, state and local parks, forests and wilderness areas. In addition, you can search for points of interest by name or proximity to your location and view descriptive details for terrain contours, topo elevations, summits and geographical points.

Customizing maps for your Garmin outdoor handheld – and downloading your activity afterward – were never easier. Through a few simple steps, Garmin’s Custom Maps can bring the details, labels and landmarks of your existing paper or electronic map to a compatible Garmin Oregon, Dakota or Colorado. Compatible with both PC and Mac, this free utility complements the myriad of mapping products already offered for Garmin devices, including City Navigator®, NT for turn-by-turn directions on city streets, Blue Chart® g2, for marine charting, and TOPO U.S. 24K and 100K map software for incredible terrain detail (each sold separately). The power of Custom Maps is exemplified through paper and digital maps labeled for specific events and purposes, such as a college graduation invitation that lists campus buildings; a roadmap of a parade, marathon, 5K or bike race; a park pamphlet showing trailheads; land-management maps of wildlife and game areas; or a historic illustration of an area as it once stood. To walk through the steps, to find and share maps and to join discussions about Garmin Custom Maps, visit www.garmin.com/CustomMaps.

Experiences will live on long after the activity has ended, thanks to Garmin Connect’s newly announced compatibility with Garmin outdoor handhelds, adding an expansive new product line to the free-to-join online community of more than 17 million activities – with more than 38,000 new activities per day – for sharing, storing, analyzing and enjoying. Outdoor and fitness enthusiasts alike can share activities on Facebook and Twitter, export to Google Earth or relive the activity in table view, calendar view or on a variety of maps including our new embedded Google Earth view.

This December 2009 update also allows you to: easily upload to and from next-generation Garmin devices; manually upload .gpx files; send any track found at Garmin Connect in Explore to your Garmin Outdoor device for navigation; and export activity files in .gpx and .tcx format to use on third-party applications. Learn more and join Garmin Connect at http://connect.garmin.com.

Weighing only 6.8 ounces, the Oregon 450t and Oregon 450 last up to 16 hours on two AA batteries. Each device has a high-sensitivity GPS receiver with HotFixTM, which automatically calculates and stores critical satellite information and can use that information to quickly calculate a position. The new Oregon models have 850 MB of internal memory and a microSD™ card slot for photos and optional map data, and you can store up to 2,000 waypoints, 200 routes, 5,000 caches and a tracklog of up to 10,000 points and 200 saved tracks. Geocachers can help the environment and be more efficient by going paperless with Oregon by quickly downloading cache information directly to the device. Oregon stores and displays key information such as location, terrain, difficulty, hints and description, so that you don’t have to tote printouts with you. Learn more about geocaching, getting started and going paperless at www.garmin.com/geocaching.