Audi A8: World's First Google Earth-Enabled In-Car Nav System

The 2011 Audi A8 continues to set the full-size sedan gadget bar higher with the integration of Google Earth and terrain-mapping into its 8-inch LCD screen. Now you can find a Starbucks... in 3D!

TomTom Releases $50 US-Only iPhone App

Given the intense competition in the turn-by-turn app wars, TomTom is offering an alternative to their $99 original version by ditching Canada and dropping the price to $50. More »

More Evidence Apple's Looking Beyond Google for iPhone Maps?

A few months ago, Apple bought their own mapmaker, Placebase, which seemingly opened the possibility of non-Google-y maps. Now, they're looking for an iPhone maps engineer to "rethink how users use Maps and change the way people find things." More »

Waze Turn-By-Turn App Lets You Play Pac-Man With Your Car

Free, crowd-sourced turn-by-turn app Waze might not navigate quite as well as the Navigons and Telenavs of the world, but it's got one killer feature that they don't: cherries, to chomp with your car. More »

Magellan Sends Its Eldest Child Into the iPhone Turn-By-Turn App War, Tearfully

In this war there are two battles: the polite, traditional fight between expensive, full-featured apps like Navigon and TomTom, and the I-will-undercut-you-if-it-means-killing-my-own-mother gorefest of the cheaper apps, like MotionX and Gokivo. With RoadMate, Magellan has taken the road less bloody. More »

Microsoft Pulling The Plug On MSN Direct In 2012

While it's probably not the first casualty of the Google GPS navigation bombshell, the fact remains—Microsoft is pulling the plug on their MSN Direct service on January 1st, 2012. More »

Is Google Secretly Working On A Free Mobile Navigation App?

There's a lot of speculation about Google working on and preparing to release a mobile navigation app. For free. The logic's there and the pieces fit, but we still lack solid proof. More »

RC Girls Would Be a Nerd's Dream Come True

At the Kajimoto Laboratory, engineers have developed a helmet that can be used to guide the visually impaired by tugging their ears. It seems that this guy dreams of a day when it could be used to tug something else. More »

Gokivo Drops Monthly Rate to $5/Month

Possibly in response to the amazingly low price of Fullpower's MotionX GPS (stay tuned for full review), Networks In Motion has reduced the monthly rate of its Gokivo iPhone app to $4.99. [iTunes Link]

Apple Buys Their Very Own Maps Company (See Ya, Google Maps?)

The Apple/Google divorce continues to come into focus: Apple quietly bought Placebase, a mapping service company, back in July. Apple doesn't buy companies it's not going to use. Meaning, Apple's getting into making their own maps. Peace out, Google. More »

Garmin Nuvifone G60 Is Finally Happening: On AT&T Oct. 4 for $299

Took long enough: The near-vaporware Garmin nuvifone G60 GPS-cum-fone is actually coming out, and it's gonna be on AT&T come Oct. 4 for $300, with an extra $5/month for navigation services. I'm sure it will fail miserably. [Yahoo]

Navigon for iPhone Sucker-Punches TomTom With Text-to-Speech, iPod Controls

There are plenty of serviceable turn-by-turn nav apps for the iPhone, but the best of the bunch—TomTom and Navigon—have been locked in a dead heat. With Navigon's latest free update, the choice has gotten a little clearer. More »

APSI C100's Removeable Touchscreen Actually Makes Me Excited about a GPS

Personal navigation device design is usually as boring as late night infomercials, but not APSI's C100. The half GPS half PMP comes with a cradle which you can slide the touchscreen device in and out of. More »

TomTom For iPhone Gallery

Would You Pay $200 For TomTom's iPhone Car Kit?

We've been waiting for the supposed Summer launch of TomTom's turn-by-turn iPhone app and car kit ever since we saw it at WWDC. Now one UK retailer looks to be taking pre-orders for £113.85 (about $195). More »

TeleNav Turn-By-Turn Navigation Lands on the MyTouch 3G

It'd be weird if this didn't happen, but here you go anyway: TeleNav's turn-by-turn GPS Navigator app, of G1 and iPhone fame, is coming to the MyTouch 3G. Just like last time around, it's $10/mo after a 30-day free trial More »

Pull-Navi System Gives Directions and Dumbo-Like Ears

I used to be excited about iPhone turn-by-turn navigation, but the Pull-Navi system (straight from Tokyo University of Electro-Communications' crazy folks) is way better. It comes with a stylish helmet and will yank on ears until they look like Dumbo's. More »

Garmin Neverfone Nuvifone G60 Ships Next Week To Someone, Somewhere

Garmin, which has been fairly frank about how totally, like, hard it is to make a new smartphone, has finally announced they'll be shipping the Nuvifone S60 to Taiwan on the 27th. It only took the—wait, 19 months? More »

The World's Smallest, Potentially Seediest GPS, GSM and RF Tracker

It looks like a nondescript battery, but this is actually the world's smallest GPS, GSM and RF tracking device. More »

GBalpha's Ranger Brings GPS Navigation To The Nintendo DS

GBalpha has developed the first serious touchscreen GPS navigation system for the Nintendo DS. It features a U-Blox 5 chip, 32MB of extended memory and Google Earth integration. More »

Range Rover 2010's 12-inch Dual View Touchscreen Satisfies Two People at Once

The 510 HP 2010 Range Rover will have a dual view touchscreen, meaning the driver and passenger sees two different images based on their respective angles. More »

Apple Patent Outlines Smarter and Safer...In-Car Navigation Interface?

Here's one from left field: you know how your car's navigation console locks itself when in motion, whether or not there's a passenger to safely operate it? Apple, of all people, wants to fix that.

iPhone's First Turn-by-Turn Navigation App XROAD G-Map Yanked from App Store

XROAD's G-Map, the iPhone's well-reviewed first turn-by-turn navigation app, has been pulled from the App Store. UPDATE: It's because they were naughty and violated the App Store's terms.

iPhone's First Turn-by-Turn Navigation App Reviewed: Outstanding, Not Perfect

Kicking Tires takes the iPhone's first turn-by-turn GPS navigation app, XROADS G-Map for a spin, and while it's got some issues, it's an "outstanding value" for $40. More »

Mio Creates 'Kosher' GPS Unit, For The Most Orthodox of Geeks

And it is certain that if ever you turn away from the Lord your Mio, and go after the Garmin, I bear witness to you today that destruction will overtake you. —Deuteronomy 8:19(ish) More »

My Tracks For Android Logs Your Day via GPS, Uploads To Google Maps

In the second big GPS-on-Android related tidbit today, Google released My Tracks, a cool app for logging a route of any kind via GPS and saving it to Google Maps. More »

SiRF, King of GPS Chips, Acquired By Multifunction Chip Maker CSR: Is Standalone GPS Dying?

CSR Who? CSR specializes in Bluetooth and multiple connection options on a single chip. Maybe this makes sense because connected, location-aware phones like the Android and iPhone and Nuvifone are killing the standalone GPS. More »

Turn-By-Turn Voice Navigation Comes to Jailbroken iPhones

Six months after the App Store was launched, the iPhone app gray market lives on: turn-by-turn navigation has come to jailbroken iPhones in the form of xGPS. UPDATED More »

TomTom Go 740 Live: Their Connected GPS

TomTom's Go 740 Live GPS is their first to have a cellular connection built-in, used to download traffic weather and friend finder information. More »

First Turn-By-Turn Navigation App Comes to Android, Hates America

AndNav2 is Android's first
turn-by-turn navigation app, marking one of the first instances where Android's wide-open apps policy has put it at an advantage over the iPhone. At least, in Europe. UPDATED 10:38 EST

Since the software is based on the OpenStreetMap mapping data, the app will be more useful in some areas than others, as the map information is, at least in part, crowdsourced like Wikipedia. The app itself, though, is polished. The search and directions functions will be familiar to anyone who has used a satnav unit (or even Google Maps) before, and the turn-by-turn functionality seems solid. More »

Medion's New GPSs Are Really Secure, Need Your Fingerprints to Navigate

Medion's new GoPal GPS units have an unusual extra feature intended as a deterrant for thieves: fingerprint scanners. The GoPal X5535, P5235 and P5435 all have a tiny scanner and will only work when they recognize one of five stored prints, making them useless if stolen. They've all got 5-inch screens, though the P5235 has voice control, the P5435 has Bluetooth and the X5535 has a gyrometer so it can compensate for brief losses of GPS signal by detecting car movements—all three get live traffic updates with Traffic Message Channel. Pretty neat, though leaving your GPS in your car is likely to tempt some thieves to break in, no matter how secure the device itself is. Out in Europe at the moment, no pricing info is available. [Electronista]

Porsche P'9522 Cellphone Lacks 3G, Has GPS For Navigating Your Porsche

Porsche has kicked out cellphones before: but none so capable as the upcoming P'9522. It's a butch but sweetly-minimal design flip phone, with a rotating screen, and it's just got its FCC pass so it should be on the way here soon. Among its many features, it sadly lacks 3G connectivity, but the rest—including on-board GPS—almost make up for that. More »