Joining other comical characters such as Homer Simpson and, err, Kim Cattrall, Snoop's VoiceSkin is available to download now for anyone who's confident they can last more than five minutes receiving directions like "Turn around when possible and keep it 'G', ya d-i-g?" [VoiceSkins via NME]

Image Credit: DodgeChallenger1

We're not sure when the sale ends—maybe ALK hasn't decided—but if you have at least a marginal interest in GPS apps for your iPhone or Android, it might be time to plunk down some cash for it. $20 ain't free, and CoPilot's looks sometimes verge on gaudy, but it's a competent, frequently updated app, and now a steal compared to even the cheapest subscription GPS app. [Android Version; iPhone Version; iTunes Link]

Update: This offer is extended until 9am Eastern Time on Tuesday, December 1st.

Skiing and snowboarding have always been cutting-edge sports, thanks to renegade personalities and high-tech gear. But this ski season, designers are stepping it up to a whole new level. Here, take a look at some of the finest in snowsports tech-and enter to win some gear of your own.

Want to score your own high-tech snowsports equipment? It's easy: Visit our sister site Skiingmag.com (we share owners, and a love of playing in the snow with the latest gadgets). Every day for the next week, they're giving away free gear, lift tickets and resort packages. All you have to do is answer a trivia question and enter to win.

Popular Science is your wormhole to the future. Reporting on what's new and what's next in science and technology, we deliver the future now.

Unlike traditional GPS, RTK-GPS doesn't measure the delay between its signal and the the signal received by a satellite—instead it measures the shorter wavelengths in the satellite's carrier signal. This can mean accuracies within one centimeter, but there are difficulties with aligning signals with RTK, and the need for multiple receivers makes the technology impractical for navigation. This is why the technology is most widely used in land surveying. If you would like to tinker around with one yourself, full instructions are available on the project page. [Project Page via Make]

Designed by Lucia Lorio, this fashion line is dubbed "Find Me If You Can." But how could you not find someone when they're running around with a pager-sized GPS device sewn into a bodice? While the fact that it would be impossible to not notice the gadget makes me laugh off the whole paranoia of jealous men using this as a sneaky way to keep tabs on their lovers, I still think it's a ridiculous design. Why you would spend between $1200 and $1600 for something intended to be ripped off a body. [The Age via GizmoWatch]

The module relays this information to your GPS unit via Bluetooth where you will be able to view a set of customizable gauges that provide details on things like fuel economy, RPMs, throttle position, intake manifold pressure, coolant temperature, intake air temperature, and emissions.

Awesome? Yeah, sure. Will it save Garmin from destruction at the hands of a possible Google navigation juggernaut? No, probably not. [Cnet via NaviGadget via Ubergizmo via DVICE]

Google Maps Navigation
• Google Navigator for Android Review: Good For Free But Far From Perfect
• Google Maps Navigation: A Free, Ass-Kicking, Turn-by-Turn Mobile App

(An)Droid:
• Motorola Droid First Hands On: It's a Terminator
• A Visual Guide to Android 2.0: So Much Nicer
• No Android Version of HTC HD2 After All?
• GSM Motorola Droid Caught on Video
• How Motorola Stopped Sucking
• Droid Eris Doesn't Look Too Shabby for a Cheapo Android Phone
• HTC Droid Eris Might Be the Cheapest Android Phone at $99
• HTC Hero Among First To Get Android 2.0 Update

Reviews:
• $1000 1080p Projector Battlemodo: Optoma HD20 vs Vivitek H1080FD
• BlackBerry Storm 2 Review: Improving, But Still Mostly Cloudy
• Corsair Flash Voyager 128GB USB Drive: As Big and Fast As a Small Fish
• Canon S90 Review: It'll Never Leave My Pocket (Except When I'm Taking Pictures)
• Samsung Moment Review: The ED-209 of Android Phones

The Copy/Paste Twins Saga
• I Want to Have Twins Just to Get Them These Awesome T-Shirts
• Twin Apple Fangirls Pwn Twin PC Clones
• The Origin of the Twin Copy-Paste T-Shirts

The Rest:
• 12 Things You Need To Know About Apple TV 3.0
• High Res Video of Ares I-X Launch
• http://gizmodo.com/5393755/an-astronaut-explains-how-well-fall-in-love-with-space-again
• Apple Tablet Will Restore Comic Books To Former Glory
• Build The Spirit Radio That Creeped Out Tesla Himself
• Behold, the BlackBerry* Watch: $150, Coming in February

The Game Changer

Brian already went through the details when he broke the news, all the features you need to know about. On paper, this baby sounds like it has everything the $100 apps have, and it's free (for Android 2.0 users). I won't go over all of the features again—live traffic, over-the-air maps, multiple visual layers, search along routes, etc.—so I encourage you to read that. This is what it feels to use the thing day to day, the wheels-on-the-ground perspective, and though it's certainly as powerful as billed, the experience itself is a little more sobering.

On Android 2.0, on the Verizon Wireless Motorola Droid I've been testing, Google navigation is part of the Car Home suite, an easy-to-read, easy-to-reach set of apps including map, turn-by-turn navigation, voice search, text search and contacts. However, as you can probably guess from reading that lineup, the lines are so blurry it can get confusing fast. The sane place to start is voice search.

Voices In, Voices Out

The surprise hit of Google's new software is the voice command. I said "Navigate to Cloud City" and it quickly launched the navigator, showing me a few options with "Cloud City" in the name. On top was my wife's favorite coffee shop (home of my favorite BBQ pulled-pork sandwich). I tapped it and got on my way. I have done this with street addresses, store names and categories like simply "barbecue" and it's worked fine. It's only when I tried text searching that things got iffy.

But voice command isn't the only voice feature that's awesome on this. The turn-by-turn lady may be a tad robotronic, but that's because she tells you everything, including street names and numbers. Text-to-speech is considered a bit of a premium among the iPhone apps (many have it or are getting it, but not all do), so to find it for free is impressive.

Searching Highs, Searching Lows

As I mentioned, the text search is not as smooth as the voice-activated stuff. That's because there are several different places to search, and at times they overlap in ways that make my head feel light. There's the basic directions view that iPhone users are used to seeing, where you type a destination with no predictive guessing on the app's part. Once you finish typing, it picks the most likely destination or offers you some options. Then there's the true "Search" window that gives you a keyboard and lets you type whatever you like, and tries to anticipate what it is you're typing by showing you similar past searches. And then there's a screen of all your past searches, that you can only get to by backing out of the main Search window. It's strange, and took me a while to figure out how to return to this little Narnia of a helpful screen.

If that's not chaotic enough, well, take away any browsable POI menus, any "go home" preset address feature, and any multi-stop trip planning tool. Scared yet? At least its only a few taps to your contacts—which you can fill up with all your favorite destinations—but only if you remember what those taps are.

Street View Blues

One of the things I was super excited about when Brian came back from his secret Google meeting was the Street View feature: When you came to a tricky intersection, Google would show you the actual intersection, and you would know just where to turn. Well, I live in Seattle, one of the biggest cities and certainly one of the most high-tech, and though I've driven with this thing on a few outings this week, I haven't once been shown a photo of an intersection. (Note: Brian says you have to tap the screen to see the picture as you approach an intersection, to which I reply, "Sounds suicidal, I'll pass.")

I do, however, see the photos pop up when I reach my destination, and without exception they've looked awful. Sure, you can flick them around once you've stopped, but I think this highlights the major trouble with Street View on a mobile platform.

Steady As She Goes

The driving directions are, for the most part, just fine. Re-routing is fast when you make an unscheduled turn, and the Droid phone appears to track the road as well or better than an iPhone. I have heard others talk of reliability issues, but frankly, that kind of evaluation takes weeks or months, and results can differ from location to location. Nobody outside of Google knows exactly what the reliability weak points are, especially since Google is using (from what I can tell) its own map data.

When you've navigated, you can pull up layers—traffic view, which shows you where the trouble's going to be; satellite view, which looks neat but I don't know how practical it is; and POI layers, like where the nearest gas or parking is. There's some customization you can do to this, but only in the 2D bird's-eye view.

The power comes when you select the Route Info screen (shown above), by popping up a menu while in your navigation screen. There you can see an icon with a solid arrow and a broken arrow, indicating alternate routes. Tap that icon, and you'll see your route plus two ghostly alternatives. By selecting one of the alternatives up top, you can re-route. The Route Info screen also contains the all-important turn-by-turn list, buried a bit more than I'd like, but clear and readable nonetheless.

Tooling around northeast Seattle has been fine. My gripes about the driving interface are mostly cosmetic: You can see the time till arrival, in hours and minutes, but you don't see a time of arrival, which I prefer. On other navigators and apps I've gotten used to seeing my speed in MPH and even posted speed limits, and Google doesn't show those either.

But at least the screen is clean and easy to read. If the screen stayed like this, I'd live.

Someday We'll Meet Again?

I spent a lot of time telling you what's wrong with the Google navigation app, but that's mostly because I get the feeling we'll all be experiencing it one way or another soon enough, be it on this exceptional Motorola Droid, other Android handsets or even on the iPhone. It's an extremely powerful program, but the execution isn't the best. Not by a stretch.

Still, if this was built in to the iPhone's Google Maps, or offered as a free download at the App Store, damn would it steal customers like a mofo. You might still see the occasional sale of a Navigon or a CoPilot, because of particular necessary features and because of the onboard map databases (which people who go off-grid prefer), but really, this thing would—and probably will—swallow the GPS app market alive.

Because of that, I am hoping Google's developers pay close attention to this review, too. The app is still in beta, but there's a lot of user-interface work yet to be done. Google: If you're going to knock everyone else off the mountain, at least give us an app worthy of a king.

Amazing voice recognition engine

Live traffic and alternate route planner

Text-to-speech

Good routing and fast re-routing

Satellite view and other views not always useful

Text search features are overlapping, confusing

Interface overall needs better flow

No POI category browsing or "go home" feature

No multi-stop trip planner

Esquire is one of the three magazines at the top of the journalistic totem pole—you write a feature for it, and a book deal falls in your lap with an old-timey leatherbound thud. Hallowed as the brand is, its leadership is having a deuce of a time getting digital. There was last year's humiliating venture into E-Ink-based advertorial. And then there's the December 2009 issue.

It will feature, among other actors, Robert Downey Jr. squatting awkwardly and gesturing towards his manhood, a human frame for what looks like a very basic 2D bar code. Yep, it's augmented reality, like they've done with Star Trek and Best Buy. Hold it the image up to a webcam, and, according to the WSJ, you "trigger the video segments, which are similar to some video-conferencing technologies in their lifelike quality." Wow, a video segment as lifelike as video conferencing, springing forth from Downey's balls. So we end up with just one question: Who's the most shameless, Esquire's editors, its advertising department or Downey? [WSJ]

Oh TomTom, your comeback has come too late. While the record should show that TomTom's iPhone app certainly made up for many shortcomings of its portable navigators, the delayed iPhone dock with built-in redundant GPS isn't going to take things to the next level. Since it was announced, GPS apps have dropped to prices so low they are actually free in certain cases. There are enough decent cheap options—and then some—in the App Store to guarantee you won't be paying $100 for TomTom's app. Since the dock sells for an additional $120—with no bundle pricing in sight—TomTom's iPhone navigation experience is suddenly more expensive than any TomTom navigator currently selling to people who aren't idiots. Engadget's dock review highlighted these issues, pointing out that its only real benefit is bestowing GPS reception on 1st-gen iPhones and iPod Touches—even though TomTom doesn't support them with a compatible app. No matter what happens, this product seems doomed. [Engadget]

Sometime in early 2010, Amtrak will be giving highspeed wireless internet access to people who ride its highspeed Acela trains. Some remark that at the outset this will be "free," but I say nonsense: Just because you're not paying for it one way doesn't mean you're not paying for it another. I have fond memories of the year I spent riding the rails from NYC to DC and back again, but that's just because I've blocked out the overpriced tickets, the insulting frequent-rider program, the long lines for the snack bar, and the fact that, if the trains ran at all, they would be remarkably late. So you see the Wi-Fi won't be free, no matter how little money changes hands. [Wi-Fi Net News]

While the rest of the world is talking about how great a tablet would be for books, videos, comics and all other varieties of leisure, the French are building a tablet for cooking. Actually, if they built a tablet for cooking, we'd cover it. QOOQ (get it?) is just some gimped Linux box that happens to be programmed to receive and display food-related videos, recipes and articles and, apparently, not a lot else. Call me know when it's oleophobic, sink-rinse-able, knife-friendly and can grind pepper rough or fine. [Electronista]

Fortunately, that is plenty of time for subscribers to the GPS information service to jump ship. You don't even have to wait for your subscription to terminate—just shut down your service anytime before the end date and receive a refund for the unused portion of your service. Check out the MSN Direct page for the full details. [MSN Direct via Electronista]

To recap the only review we've ever written that didn't even have a "Good" section, the Nuvifone was a failure in about every way that the once-hot handset could've been: It's crashy, it's got a clunky resistive screen, the browser is really, really tough to use, and camera sometimes works, there's a $5/month charge for basic services like weather, traffic and local events, the battery life is horrendous, and the OS acts like a navigation unit firmware with tumorous telecommunications outgrowth. And oh god, that price: $300 with an AT&T contract, which is about how much it'd cost you to buy one iPhone 3G with TomTom and Navigon apps.

So yeah, a price drop was all but inevitable, but it's heartening to see it happen this soon, even if not by Garmin's hand. Next stop: 0. [Amazon via Engadget]

A web interface positions you various little ones on a map marked with your custom "safety zones." But the most enticing feature, if we're studying the GPS tracking page properly, is that you can assign your children with various barnyard animal iconography. That'll teach little piggy the consequences of being late.
The Little Buddy will be on sale at Best Buy shortly, and we assume the service could come with some sort of monthly cost. [Best Buy via navigadget]

The bizarre commentary on global warming, the the fact that it looks like a bomb and that it is part of an exhibition called Laughing Prohibited! makes this quite an amusing peace of artwork. Naturally, the exhibit comes with one of those pretentious and absurd descriptions:

Laughing Prohibited! states this clearly: there is no reason to laugh at all. Is there any (artistic) freedom of speech left after the debates on the Danish cartoons and the AEL counter-cartoons? Should you laugh about the works of these producers, than you are not sincere. Is there the legacy of Theo van Gogh still fertile? We need to concentrate and to focus in order to ask these fundamental questions. To be able to do so, we need clarity and parameters. Therefore, as a start: do not laugh!
Look closely and question: relate!

Oh, I believe my laughter is sincere. [onomatopee via Mocoloco]

The box has a button and an LCD display on the lid. When you press the button, the display will show you how far, in kilometers, you are from the goal location. It doesn't give you directions, so you need to triangulate where you're supposed to go via trial and error. Oh, and you can only press the button 50 times.

There's a pretty sweet disguised back door built-in as well, just in case the battery dies or the GPS unit fails.

Spoiler: the box only opens when brought to Île-de-Bréhat, France. As for what's inside?

With all the electronics, there wasn't much room inside the box for anything too substantial. I put in a few local (US) gift cards to entice them to visit soon, a set of Kazuo Ishiguro audio books (on a USB key), and an overly sentimental card. And of course, as I pointed out in the card, if either of them fancies doing a little Arduino development, there's a perfectly good Duemilanove to play with, not to mention an LCD, a servo, and a GPS.

I guess the puzzle itself is present enough, really. Pretty cool stuff, no? [Arduiniana via Make]

While cellphones often use Wi-Fi to triangulate a person's position in the world, the T301W only works on preconfigured Wi-Fi networks that are coupled with additional beacons. In other words, you sort of build your own Wi-Fi triangulation network in a smaller area.

But the idea is still pretty handy. The $60 waterproof wristband operates up to a month between recharges, and it would allow hospitals to keep tabs on troubled patients, family members to locate one another on cruise ships and, when coupled with a remote detonation device, could make anyone capable of running their own forced labor camp. [Ekahau via Engadget]

Technology is all about what's new and what's next—today's iPhone is just tomorrow's paperweight. What about the things that were "new" and "next" yesterday or the day before? We live in a time of so much change and progress that there's nostalgia for things that kinda still exist. Here are a few that, for better or worse, are fading fast.

Got any more dead innovations you want to lament or wish good riddance? Chances are Anna Jane covered them in her book, but until you pick up a copy, you might as well comment about it below.

Anna Jane Grossman is the author of Obsolete: An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By (Abrams Image) and the creator of iamobsolete.net. Her writing has appeared in dozens of publications, including the New York Times, Salon.com, the Associated Press, Elle and the Huffington Post. She has a complicated relationship with technology, but she does have an eponymous website: AnnaJane.net. Follow her on Twitter at @AnnaJane. [ Photo of Anna Jane by Amber Marlow Blatt, from Hey Brooklyn]

I am not going to tell you this is the best turn-by-turn road navigation app in the world. The designers made some funny UI choices, there's no multi-destination or point-on-map routing, it doesn't have text-to-speech, and it only runs in portrait mode, taking up awkward space on my dashboard. Still, there's almost no reason not to get it.

I still think Navigon is the slickest, and ALK's CoPilot is impressively full featured for costing just $35. But the commitment required for MotionX GPS Drive beats them all: It's $3 to download, and you get a month of turn-by-turn directions included in that. Then, if you want, you pay either $25 for a year of full turn-by-turn, or $3 for a month—and the charges are non-recurring. You can pay the $3 only when you actually need it.

Compared to What?

Because it's a connected product, its closest comparisons are AT&T Navigator by TeleNav ($10/month) and Gokivo by Networks In Motion (recently reduced to $5/month). It doesn't come with 1.5GB in onboard maps like TomTom, Navigon, ALK and Sygic—instead it downloads them over the air—so you have to be in a service area when you are setting out on your destination. Still, if your phone has less memory to spare, it could be better.

Connected Services

Not only does it download Navteq maps on the fly, but it uses online search instead of stored points of interest. In theory this is better, because it means fewer wrong addresses of business who closed or moved. That's not always the case, but I did find MotionX to have a decent online search—the first in this class that I've seen powered by Microsoft's Bing.

Again, because it's online, it has access to traffic data. At the moment, though, the app only uses traffic information in its routing, says the developers. There's no way to check a traffic report like on other apps. However, the developers appear to be toying with a Dash-like concept too: A future version of the app may be used to gather and share its own live traffic data. There's nothing like that now, and Fullpower won't share details, but it sounds like fun. I also asked about live gas prices, which others offer: None now, but that will change.

Some Superficial Complaints

I did have a few cosmetic issues with the app. For starters, it doesn't have a landscape mode, so the phone is always upright. I want landscape mode because it fits way better when it's horizontal in the dashboard mount (which, like with all other GPS apps, will run you an extra $10-$100). That's a fact, though Fullpower goes out of their way to say they didn't add landscape because nobody's asked for it yet. Until now.

Oddly enough, Fullpower is proud of their in-app compass, which I find extraneous on two levels. For one, if I'm looking at a map, no matter whether north is up or the heading is up, I know which direction I'm pointing. Additionally, that compass only works with 3GS (I believe), and the 3GS already has a compass. When do you ever pull over to the side of the road and say "if I only knew where north was!"? Maybe in the days before GPS that was an issue, but now it doesn't matter so much. (Until the sky falls, at least.)

I would also love to customize the things I see on the main screen. At the moment, next to the upcoming turn information, it flips through assorted trip data: ETA, compass heading, distance remaining and time remaining. I really only care about ETA, so I'd like to freeze that up top, and may be get a speed indicator with speed limit warnings as well.

My final issue is more of a quirk than anything else: To view the list of upcoming turns, you have to tap the iPod button at the bottom of the screen. It's nice to have rich iPod access in the app (all apps have a rudimentary iPod access—as long as a song is already playing, you double-tap the home button—but this does more). Still it's weird for that all-important list of turns to be hidden under a button called "iPod."

How Is The Price So Low?

A guy like me could bitch about this app more, trust me, but the fact is, I've driven with it for almost a week, and it gets you where you want to go, quickly and simply. But it's going to sell like mad because the price of entry is the lowest around, and its two-year cost of ownership—$53 if you use it regularly—is competitive, especially when you consider that's the initial download plus two completely optional $25 increments. By allowing you so many options to walk away, MotionX actually has you by the balls.

I have asked Fullpower and its competitors how pricing could get this crazy, with $100 apps competing with $3 apps. Fullpower's best answer is that they're not in any other GPS turn-by-turn business, so they don't have to protect the price of earlier products the way TeleNav or TomTom might have to. ("If they offer a better value on the iPhone than to their existing customers, they may have challenges.") When I asked TeleNav, makers of the $10/month AT&T Navigator and Sprint Navigator, they said, "Honestly, at a $3-per-month price point, it is unclear how a company could possibly innovate, build out features and work on the quality of the app without losing money."

What they didn't say, but what you're already thinking, is that for $3 a month, it doesn't hurt to find out. [iTunes Link]

Amazing price, and lowest possible barrier to entry

Fully functional spoken turn-by-turn navigation app

Connected to Navteq maps and Bing live local search

No landscape view (which some, like me, prefer)

Navigation screen could show more relevant data, or be more customizable

No multi-destination routing or routing to point on map, as found in other apps

For more on iPhone GPS app, check out our iPhone Navigation Battlemodo Part 1 and Part 2.