GPS

A new open and crowdsourced initiative to deploy more geiger counters all over Japan looks to be a go. Safecast, formerly RDTN.org, recently met and exceeded its $33,000 fund-raising goal on Kickstarter, which should help Safecast send between 100 and 600 geiger counters to the catastrophe-struck country.

The data captured from the geiger counters will be fed into Safecast.org, which aggregates radiation readings from government, nonprofit, and other sources, as well as into Pachube, a global open-source network of sensors. Safecast is one of the larger crowdsourced monitoring efforts, not unlike a similar effort in the United States that predated the Japanese disaster.… Read more

Summer is coming. Thousands of lumbering behemoths will soon take to the roads, loaded with families or retirees. These RVs are misunderstood creatures. They may clog up the highways and decorate Wal-Mart parking lots, but they have needs just like other vehicles. RVs need GPS love, too.

Rand McNally is courting the RV community with a new GPS device designed just for them. The TripMaker RVND 5510 sports a name that's almost as long as an actual Winnebago. It comes stocked up with information that would make a regular car driver's head spin.… Read more

Last Friday, Volkswagen opened up its Electronic Research Laboratory (ERL) to journalists, showing off new areas of high-tech automotive research. But one of the most interesting projects, and not too far out from production, involves making Google Street View part of the navigation system.

Here at CNET, we were most recently blown away by the navigation system in the 2012 Audi A7, which integrates Google Earth. While driving the A7, the navigation system showed satellite imagery, with the car moving through a photographic landscape. Audi incorporates a data connection through T-Mobile in the A7 to download the imagery from Google. … Read more

GPS devices are becoming increasingly sophisticated and packed with features that at the very least create a sense of being, well, findable. One newcomer to the scene, the Laipac S-911 from Adiant Solutions, may be among the featuriest of them all.

Adiant is marketing the device to those who'd like to watch over children with autism or monitor elderly loved ones with dementia. But let's face it, this bracelet can do much more. Have teenagers you'd like to set virtual fences around? Aid workers to reach more easily in disaster zones? Registered sex offenders to keep outside of prohibited zones?

Look no further. The Laipac S-911 features a GSM cell phone with phone book and SOS button; AGPS for indoor tracking; G-sensing to alert when the wearer falls; and geo-fencing to alert when the wearer leaves--or enters--a given zone. The device even comes with a tamper detector in case said bracelet wearer does not want to, well, wear it.… Read more

Those worried about what location information their phones are gathering might want to scrutinize their car navigation systems first.

Police in the Netherlands have used aggregate data from TomTom's satellite navigation systems to install speed cameras where drivers tend to exceed the speed limit, TomTom said yesterday. The practice doesn't involve any individual data, but TomTom is barring it in the future after customers objected.

The company's sat-nav systems can send position data back to TomTom, and the company uses the information for purposes such as routing people around traffic jams and providing accurate estimates of journey … Read more

"Doughnuts. Is there anything they can't do?" OK, that isn't one of the famous Homer Simpson quotes drivers will now find on the TomTom GPS app for the iPhone. But with Homer as a co-pilot, drivers need to get in the spirit of Homer-isms: "Make a U-turn. Ha ha, you've goofed. D'oh!"

TomTom today announced that the voice of Homer Simpson, (Dan Castellaneta) of the long-running TV series "The Simpsons," can be downloaded for $5.99. The Homer Simpson voice requires version 1.7 of the TomTom App (available for $49.99) installed.

"Homer's skills will help keep drivers and fans entertained in a light-hearted and familiar way. It's exciting to have him onboard!" said Alain Pakiry, senior vice president of marketing at TomTom.

The Homer Simpson voice for the TomTom App is available in the U.S., as well as Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, and Sweden. And, of course, Springfield.… Read more

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that despite Apple's Location Services being in the off position, iPhones are still collecting your general location data. National media outlets have been analyzing recent reports that Apple's iPhones and iPads with 3G are tracking location data and storing it in an unsecured location on the iPhone.

According to tests performed by The Wall Street journal, those location data collection practices are not disabled even if all the Location Services (which are turned on by default) are completely turned off.

After thieves tried several times to steal a friend's car, Don A. Bailey bought a Zoombak personal GPS Locator device so that if the thieves ever succeeded, the car's owner would be able to track its whereabouts and get it back.

He never got to try it out on a theft, but Bailey hacked the device and learned that by exploiting security weaknesses in it, he could monitor the movements of a known device, impersonate it to the Zoombak tracking system, and even look for devices in his immediate vicinity to target.

The potential for abuse is not … Read more