navigating with a tomtom go 710

It appears that ubiquitous or pervasive computing is just making more effect in our everyday life, year after year. Small smart applications or services are combining the information of virtual world with that of our physical living contexts.

Experimenting with some of the consequences personally, I yesterday got my first GPS navigation system, the TomTom GO 710. After the first try it seems a well-designed and smartly functional gadget; I particularly esteem the speed it can recalculate new route if you missed a turn. The only downside so far is that my Nokia 6630 is not fully supported in the bluetooth handsfree function: it cannot access the contact list, making it very hard to make phonecalls using it. Well, at least you can aswer calls.

And the real value is in the community, as this can be considered ‘social software’, too. There are many individuals and groups preparing and publishing GPS coordinates in TomTom’s POI/.ov2 file format, or in others. And GPS navigators relate to the future of pervasive games, too.

Some links:
http://www.tomtom.com
http://konttinen.1g.fi/tomtompoi/
http://www.abico.liitin.net/TomTom/
http://www.gps-waypoints.net/gps/
http://hain.fi/poi/
http://www.jahi.net/TomTom/index.htm
http://www.expansys.com/forum.asp?man=TOMTO&code=TOMTOMGO
http://www.iperg.org/