Have you taken advantage of the great Cyber Monday deals yet? If not, you’d better get busy because the clock is ticking. And while you’re surfing for the best deals, stop by our site and we’ll help you sharpen your Cyber Monday keyboard skills. If you’re really good at our Give-a-Garmin game, you’ll also have a chance to win 10 new Garmin GPS devices.

Energy, enthusiasm, intelligence and curiosity. That’s what local Boy Scouts brought to a Kansas City park the past couple weekends, and all I had to supply were some basic Garmin handhelds and a little know-how. OK, my know-how wasn’t even needed, because as soon as these youngsters got their hands on a GPS device, they were off and running. We recently supplied local troops with a few dozen lean and green Geko units – our tiny-yet-tough outdoor handhelds – as the Boy Scouts consider adding Geocaching as a merit category. If the past two weeks are any indication, they’ll be earning their badges in record time. Here are a few pictures taken Sunday, when the local NBC affiliate joined us as the Scouts learned about the Geko, the new touchscreen Dakota and the Oregon 550t with built-in camera – all while discovering limited-edition Garmin geocoins. As I mentioned on the air, I’m all for any activity that gets kids (and adults, for that matter) more engaged with the environment, education, recreation and technology. And the timing was perfect, as it gave me yet another reason to give thanks this holiday season that all of those elements add up to a good day at the office (or the park…).  

A lot of people ask me for freebies. Here you go: Go get your Garmin. Update the software right now. You’re at a computer – unless you’re reading this on your phone, in which case I’ll try to keep it short – so you don’t have any excuses. Even if you just bought your Garmin yesterday, had it for years or will be opening it a month from
now, our engineers may have been working on new software while it sat
on a shelf, in your house or under the tree. Updating your software through my.Garmin.com is free, it’s fast, it’s easy and it makes your Garmin even better than before without costing a dime. And with as much as our engineers are able to pack into a software update, it should really be called a product upgrade. 

Take, for example, this week’s news about Custom Maps. Simply by updating the software on your Garmin Oregon, Dakota or Colorado and following a few simple steps, you can now transform existing paper and digital maps into downloadable content to overlay onto your device. Visit garmin.com/CustomMaps to learn more about this process that maximizes the potential of your product. To get an idea of the other aspects that can be added or improved upon through software updates, check out the newest post at GPSFix.com. While it focuses on Custom Maps, the entry also rattles off the other new benefits of the latest software updates. And it’s not just outdoor handhelds that show how great products can be made even better. My fellow bloggers Carl and Peg have shown how recent software updates can improve the Approach G5 golf GPS or the Forerunner family of fitness watches. And many of these improvements are based on customer feedback, so whether you’re talking to clerks at a retail store, my colleagues at a trade show or me during a race (that’s how I passed a couple miles of the Chicago Marathon last month), your feedback is being heard. But enough from me, you’re supposed to be updating your software. You can thank me later.

What happens to the toys when the shopkeeper leaves for the day? Now we know. One of Garmin’s two new holiday commercials follows an outgoing Nutcracker set on going out. After a long day manning his post at the store, this lovable character with a huge head and even bigger personality uses his nüvi to navigate nightlife. But before this model of mobility could venture out into the world, he had to take shape in Santa’s workshop – which for a few weeks outsourced some work to Garmin headquarters. In addition to creating the look and feel of all of Garmin’s amazing GPS products, our design engineers were responsible for crafting the statues currently standing guard in Chicago at Garmin’s only retail outlet on Michigan Ave. The Nutcrackers at the Garmin Store represent our various product lines – fitness, marine, aviation, outdoors, mobile and automotive – and they serve as reminders that there’s a Garmin for everyone on your gift list. Our second holiday ad also displays the diversity in Garmin’s product line, tracking the adventures of a knight to remember, a multi-sport leprechaun, a camera-friendly Yeti, a swingin Scot and a squirrel. Enjoy, and be sure to stop back often for gift ideas and interviews with this colorful cast.

As we near the holiday season, our latest and greatest Give a Garmin holiday commercials get ready to hit the airwaves. The ads this year feature a fun cast of characters – including a fitness-obsessed Leprechaun, a cool and collected Nutcracker and our in-house Yeti …. We finished shooting the spots just weeks ago, and now it’s business as usual back at Garmin. And in the coming weeks, we plan on keeping our new colleagues busy. We’ll have them introduce themselves to all of our blog readers, and we’ve assigned some homework. Every week through December, our Wish List Wednesday will give you gift ideas from each of our product lines for those hard-to-shop-for pilots, boaters, hikers, geocachers, hunters, runners, cyclists, golfers and travelers in your life. Starting this weekend, be sure to tune in and see for yourself.