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Gratuitous Gadget Post
Jun. 27th, 2008 10:57 pmI could swear I already made this post, but I think I must have been working on it when the DSL went out Wednesday evening. I got two fun new transportation-related gadgets this week. My bicycle now has a speedometer thingie (also does odometer, trip odometer, average trip speed, max trip speed, and clock). Unlike the bike speedometer gadgets of my youth, this one doesn't rely on mechanically using the wheel to drive a mechanism (thus making you work harder), but instead has a small magnet fastened to one spoke with a sensor on the fork nearby to time revolutions.
And the new car now has a GPS (Garmin's Nüvi 760). I'm still mostly playing around with it on known routes (to evaluate how smart it is). In theory, I can also use it when walking or biking (although I don't have a bike mount for it yet). It does have a few quirks. It gets a bit discombobulated if you turn it on in a different location than it was when you turned it off. (Has to re-acquire the satellite fix.) Although it's perfectly happy to do Bluetooth pairing with my Treo, it has not yet managed to actually respond appropriately to an incoming phone call. And in theory it will transmit the audio directions to my radio, but this hasn't actually worked yet (possibly because it isn't happy about the station I picked). On the other hand, I'm utterly delighted to know that it will provide me with driving directions in several dozen different languages, including in some cases multiple dialect and gender options. So if I should need to know how to get somewhere in Estonian or in Serbian, I'm good to go. (No Welsh, alas.)
And the new car now has a GPS (Garmin's Nüvi 760). I'm still mostly playing around with it on known routes (to evaluate how smart it is). In theory, I can also use it when walking or biking (although I don't have a bike mount for it yet). It does have a few quirks. It gets a bit discombobulated if you turn it on in a different location than it was when you turned it off. (Has to re-acquire the satellite fix.) Although it's perfectly happy to do Bluetooth pairing with my Treo, it has not yet managed to actually respond appropriately to an incoming phone call. And in theory it will transmit the audio directions to my radio, but this hasn't actually worked yet (possibly because it isn't happy about the station I picked). On the other hand, I'm utterly delighted to know that it will provide me with driving directions in several dozen different languages, including in some cases multiple dialect and gender options. So if I should need to know how to get somewhere in Estonian or in Serbian, I'm good to go. (No Welsh, alas.)
