Garmin has released the nuvi 260 as another addition to their 200 series lineup and an upgrade from the nuvi 250 released a couple months ago. The major addition to the pocket-size 260 model is that it will actually speak the upcoming street names instead of just providing an upcoming distance.

Many GPS devices, including Garmin’s, give audible turn-by-turn directions but will announce a turn coming with a right or left direction in a specified distance. The nuvi 260 will not only give you the upcoming turn but will also give you the street name that you will be turning on, and I’m sure pronunciations may vary. According to Garmin this feature will make the turn-by-turn directional navigation even easier to use since users can focus more on the road and less at trying to see the street names on the device.

The …

This is an interesting combination of peripherals if nothing else. A company called Navilock out of Germany who specializes in GPS products has produced a Bluetooth enabled mouse that also acts as a GPS receiver. This is convenient in that if you are looking for a powerful GPS antenna and you are going to be using a mouse anyway, you can now just get them both in one device adding less clutter to your workspace.

The BT-451 mouse from Navilock connects to your PC, laptop or other device that supports wireless Bluetooth connectivity. If this thing is really a mouse at all or just looks like one, the company boasts that the powerful antenna under your hand will perform better with getting indoor signals than most GPS receivers, and obviously performs well outdoors, too.

The BT-451 is currently available at stores in …

Harman/Becker, a part of the Harman family of companies like Harman/Kardon, introduced today its first mobile GPS device available in the United States. The Harman/Becker Traffic Assist Highspeed 7934 is being sold exclusively for the time being through Office Depot retail stores.

The Harman/Becker Traffic Assist Highspeed 7934 gives one touchscreen access to detailed maps of the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. The 3.5-inch screen has day and night lighting modes. Route calculations are fast, said Harman/Becker, due to the 400MHz processor on board.

This little gadget simply plugs into the cigarette lighter of your car and immediately starts blocking any GPS tracking device signal in a 2-4 meter coverage area, which should cover most passenger cars. The device works as a hack to stop anyone from using GPS to keep track of where you are or where you’ve been.

The GPS jammer jams signals in a broadcasting range of 1450 to 1600Mhz with 200mW of jamming power, powered only by the 12V adapter from your car. The device may not be legal to use in all countries but should be available for sale from Chinavasion in the near future.

Navigadget

The MainNav MH350 uses a 3.5″ touchscreen at 320×240 with large buttons to make the menu navigation simple with a stylus included so you don’t get your finger smudges all over the screen.

It uses SiRF Star III with a flip antenna in the back and a mono loudspeaker for voice directions or you can connect headphones to keep the conversation just between you and MH350.

The device runs off of a Samsung 2410 processor at 266MHz with 32MB ROM and only 64MB of internal RAM, but has a SD/MMC card slot to expand the memory and add maps. You can also connect to a computer and transfer your data via USB 1.1. The GPS measures 117mm wide and weighs 175 grams, but no word on price yet available on this one.

MainNav via Navigadget

Leadtek has a couple new additions coming to their GPS lineup in the near future, going by the names LR9750 and LR9752. The models only differ in that the LR9752 includes hands free Bluetooth calling where the LR9750 does not.

Aside from that they both have text to speech (TTS) to speak out street names to you and they double as a media player to play back music, video and to view photos. The GPS devices use SiRF Star III and even supports RDS/TMC to get you live information on the current traffic on your upcoming route.

The design of the Leadtek LR9750 keeps the device looking fairly sharp and petite with a large single wheel button on the front to make navigation quick and simple. This looks like a nice GPS and we’d like to factor in the cost but at this point for some reason …

When I’m riding in a plane I love to see those little LCD’s in the seat that show you exactly where the plane is at as it follows it’s flight path, and just how much further we have to go. So it makes sense to me that kids would appreciate that as well, not to mention the chance that it might cut down on some of the repeated questions regarding our ETA.

For this device, Popular Mechanics got a look inside the test facility for Volkswagen to see what kinds of things they were working on. This particular gadget is a child navigation system which has an LCD screen that shows the child a simple form of the planned route from the car’s GPS. It also shows descriptions of …

Sanyo today dropped two new portable navigation systems into the U.S. market. The more interesting looking of these two is the feature-laden Sanyo Easy Street NVM-4070.

The Sanyo Easy Street NVM-4070, to start with, has a nice looking four-inch widescreen display which is touch-sensitive. You get text-to-speech, turn by turn navigation (including street names announced), pre-installed maps which include 1.8 million points of interest spread across all 50 states, Puerto Rico and Canada and the ability to get real time traffic updates that are graphically displayed as icons on the map.

Navigadget found some scant information about two new GPS devices from Mio, the P360 and P560, most likely to replace the current P350 and P550 models with a sleek design and trendy touchscreen.

It looks like mobile phones like the iPhone aren’t the only ones taking advantage of new touchscreen technology. The new GPS device from Mio looks to be a PDA running Windows Mobile 6 with GPS capabilities and software. There is a joystick and a couple buttons, one for Contacts and the other to launch the map application, but other than that it appears that all other interaction would need to be done through the touchscreen on the P360 and P560 models.

They both come with WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity, and SD/MMC expansion slot for memory and connects through a USB connection to your computer to …

Adding some convenience to a GPS receiver the Holux GR-239 gets its power from your cars cigarette lighter port ridding the need for batteries or some converter. In fact the entire device mounts right into the port so there are no wires or devices sliding around on your dash.

What’s more is the device can connect to your GPS device via Bluetooth, again avoiding any wires draped across your dashboard or front seat enabling wireless GPS capabilities to your mobile devices in your car, wirelessly. If you don’t have Bluetooth on your device you can still take advantage of this one-piece, battery-free SiRF Star III GPS gadget through a USB connection, and $120 of course.

Product Page via Navigadget

The new iRiver NV will be available for the Korean market soon and has just about everything you could want in a PMP. It sports a 7 inch LED display at 840 x 480, T-DMB television, GPS, FM transmitter, 1.3 megapixel camera, 2 SD card slots, a sexy remote control and supports playback of MP3, WMA, OGG, ASF, WMV, MPG, Xvid and H.264 file formats. The device doesn’t look to shabby, either.

The multiple SD card slots could possibly be for both storing media and storing map data separately, and there’s no reason the on-board digital camera could not geo-tag your photos, either. No word on price or if the iRiver NV is coming anyone’s way outside of Korea but this is certainly one to watch for.

via Akihibara News

Garmin introduced today two new widescreen GPS navigators to its nuvi line. The nuvi 200W and nuvi 250W are expected to be available in July and priced at around $500 and $550 respectively.

Both nuvis sport a 4.3-inch color touchscreen display which is viewable in the sunlight. They have a new design with a thinner GPS antenna to make it easier to mount in a car. Turn-by-turn voice directions guide you along to your destination and the nuvi can automatically recalculate your route if you get lost.

Other interesting features include a built-in picture viewer, unit converter, a theft prevention system and custom points-of-interest. The nuvi 200W includes preloaded mapping of the contiguous United States (lower 48), Hawaii and Puerto Rico while the nuvi 250W has preloaded mapping of the entire United States (including Alaska and Hawaii), Canada and Puerto Rico.

Garmin nuvi 200W …

TomTom has a new navigation gadget out which has brought a new community-based feature to the market called Map Share. The TomTom GO 720 has a lot of the cool features commonly found in portable navigation units plus a little more.

Finding accurate data on routes in obscure areas is getting better all the time, but there are always those new areas of town or those “roads less traveled” where the navigation software voice seems proud to tell you that they have “incomplete data”. The Map Share technology available on the GO 720 (and the new GO 520) allows you to map these new or desolate areas for yourself to use the next time you travel them. The GPS device also lets you record your own voice for directions if you wish, so on new routes or even on existing …

Harman/Kardan, a relatively new player in the GPS market, has released a second navigation device offering a very competitive and affordable navigation system for those considering their first GPS.

In March we reported on the nuvi 200 as a very price conscious option for an in-car GPS system at $399 but the Harman/Kardan GPS-300 is beating that price by a full $100. The GPS-300 is basically the same model as the GPS-500 except they dropped the support for MPEG-4 video and in turn can house a smaller processor with a smaller cost.

The GPS-300 Guide+Play does feature a 4-inch touchscreen with 2GB of internal memory for maps and music files along with an SD card slot that supports up to an addition 4GB of memory. It comes with turn-by-turn voice directions, multiple routes for speed, distance or to avoid toll roads, route …

Mio Technologies, which introduced the DigiWalker C220 just last month, is back at it again with the new, upper-end DigiWalker C520.

The thing which grabs us right away about the DigiWalker C520, priced at around $400, is the 4.3-inch split-screen display. It can be used in either full screen map view or a split-screen which shows off stuff such as upcoming intersections or points of interest locations. The C520, like the C220, uses touch-screen technology to make using it while driving easier. Not that we recommend you fiddle with it while screaming down the highway at 80MPH though.

Another cool feature of the C520 is its enhanced Bluetooth options. It can pair with Bluetooth-enabled cell phones to let you do hands-free calling using its built-in speaker and microphone. It also works with Bluetooth capable car stereos so you can enjoy compatible audio files played from …