New TomTom ONE XL

TomTom have announced a new in-car GPS unit, the TomTom ONE XL, with a larger 4.3 inch screen and sleek new design. The screen is actually slightly larger than its big brothers', the GO 510, 710 and 910 (but it is only .3 of an inch!).

The ONE XL is also now capable of getting traffic data and speed camera locations along with the other TomTom Plus services.

TomTom ONE XL will be available across Europe, the US, Australia and South Africa from May 2007. The UK variant comes with two map options:

- TomTom ONE XL for UK & ROI at £249
- TomTom ONE XL for Western Europe at £279


Pretty pricey considering the existing ONE is £179.99 with UK maps and a GO 510 is only another £20 more than an XL with UK maps! And as far as I can tell the only difference between a GO 510 and an XL is that there is no bluetooth handsfree or iPod control on the XL.

The new screen and inclusion of Plus services is nice but are they worth an extra £70 over the old ONE and only £20 less than a GO 510?

Maybe not if you just need directions and none of the extra stuff. I donno, it's all so confusing.

Geo-tagging - another reason to upgrade your camera.

In November I replaced my Sony DSC-P10 digital camera with a very nice Canon IXUS 850IS. This was quite a big step for me - to move away from Sony, I debated whether I should get a newer Sony and took quite a bit of convincing against it - but at the end of the day, I was replacing my Sony because it had failed, not because it was out-dated. The Canon had excellent reviews, was comparable in every way and I have not looked back since.

The research to find the right camera meant considering the specs and reviews - now I get the sneaking sensation that this spec search in future will need to take into consideration geo-tagging.

Geo-tagging, in the case of photography, is the process of including geographical meta data, usually latitude and longitude to your photographs to tie them to their position on earth.

JOBO have a device, photoGPS, which allows for geo-tagging to be fitted to your camera's hot shoe -like a regular flash unit. This unit captures the country, region and district, city, street, postal code, and even the point of interest (POI) which is closest to the captured image location and adds it to your photograph's meta-data.

This information can be used in a variety of ways. Google Earth allows users, through Picasa to match their photos to a specific location - this opens up all sorts of possibilities for travel writers, holiday makers etc. Or perhaps from a personal history point of view, a record through your photographs of where on earth you have stood - something your children and grandchildren might re-visit or yourself in later years.

Also geo-tagging would offer you a new search criteria, appended automatically to your photos - for those less keen on manual organisation. If you want to see all the photos you took at a specific place then you can.

So with this solution appearing as an add-on for hot shoe enabled cameras how long before it becomes a standard inside your camera? I think its certainly the sort of feature I'd love.

Free TomTom Traffic Updates, sort of.

How about not paying a yearly subscription for TomTom traffic and instead being able to use the over the air RDS-TMC traffic info instead? Any lucky 'GO' users out there can make the one off payment for the RDS-TMC Traffic receiver and make use of the free service to replot and avoid traffic incidents.

So what are the differences in terms of the service? Well, the RDS-TMC is going to require fm radio signal and a source that provides the information, this is obviously going to vary location by location, versus the GPRS on-demand nature of the TomTom Plus traffic system. The RDS-TMC wont work on every TomTom device, so 'ONE' users like myself will not have this option. Also the RDS-TMC has a limited number of messages, so its likely that the more expensive (in the long term) TomTom Plus service is more suitable if you must have the latest, most detailed traffic info.

At around £68 its not bad value, depending on how well it performs in the field. Of course you do have yet another attachment (the RDS-TMC Traffic receiver) to take with you, versus the omni-present mobile phone which connects you to the TomTom Plus service.

You can check it out on the TomTom UK website here or google it to your heart's content.

I would be remiss if I didn't chuck in a quick mention to any TomTom owners, mac or pc, who dont have the rather good TomTom Home software, for managing their beloved device. When I bought my 'ONE' it didn't have any mac software available, now it does. Recently installing it and allowing it to update my TomTom firmware gave 'Jane' a very nice face-lift. All gradients everywhere and some improved/re-vamped icons. Added functionality included the ability to navigate to Latitude and Longditude also the arrive by time function - where you can put in a time which you wish to arrive by when you plan your route. TomTom Home can be downloaded from this page on the UK site.

Tags: TomTom, GPS, RDS-TMC, Traffic Receiver, Traffic updates, Radio, TomTom Home, firmware, latitude, longditude

Tom Tom One, two, three?

Old news from an international point of view (US got this a couple of weeks back) but now Europe and the UK will have the pleasure of the smartly re-designed TomTom One. But for whatever reason its not totally straight forward. You see the TomTom One (the original) isn't going anywhere, in fact its still on the site and more expensive then the new TomTom One. Possible reasons include the different processor speeds (slower in the new unit). In addition to this, there are two flavours of TomTom One (new) a local version and a Euro version, with maps to suit.

Regardless this has got to be one of the sexiest and slimmest top notch navigators out there. My personal experience with the original TomTom One has been a fantastic one, a complete liberation for someone who equates Up and Down the country with my personal altitude and direction at that particular time, homing pigeon I am not.

Tags: TomTom, GPS, Sat Nav, in-car navigation system, gadget, satellite navigation, maps