Nano Watch

– Motorola has a new smart watch with enough features to keep a fitness buff humming. The “MotoACTV” is a GPS plus music player wrist watch that figures out which songs make you exercise harder and plays those more often. It does its figuring by monitoring your heart rate. It  tells you how many calories you burned and your average workout pace. It uses Bluetooth to talk to you through a headset. It can also broadcast FM radio. It’s $250 for the 8 gigabyte version.

– You can turn an Apple “Nano” music player into a wristwatch just by adding a strap. We saw some at Amazon for $23. They even had leather ones. If you use a leather strap and fix the Nano face to show the time, it looks like a regular wrist watch. To keep the clock face on top, go into the Nano’s settings, choose the clock app and choose the setting that puts the clock up front when the Nano wakes up from its sleep mode. Voila, it’s a wristwatch.  We just ordered one. See also the TikTok watchband at the Apple store.

– Another way to go is the “Striiv” pedometer, $99 from Striiv.com. Anyone who thought a pedometer was just for counting steps hasn’t seen this thing.  It has games to encourage you to walk past the 4900-step American daily average. You also earn points you can spend creating a virtual enchanted island on their web site. The more you walk, the more money the company donates to saving trees in the rain forest or polio vaccines.

You install the tiny camera using your license plate bolts, and use the Magellan Roadmate 9055 GPS device as your screen. At seven inches, it’s a smaller screen than the ones that come in many new cars but larger than most GPS screens. The Roadmate gets great reviews because of its favorites menu, lifetime traffic alerts, points of interest info and member assistance from Automobile Club (AAA).

We saw the camera advertised for $150 and the Roadmate GPS viewer for $257 at Amazon. That makes it a bit over $400 plus some handyman skills to set this up. Some wiring to the taillights is involved because you want the camera to start broadcasting what it sees as soon as you put the car in reverse.

Google “Latitude” and Apple’s “Find My Friends” are two free apps that help you, well, find your friends. “Find My Friends” works only with Apple’s latest mobile operating system, but Google’s “Latitude” works with anything. Still, if you really want to know what’s going on, you might want a tracking device, like PocketFinder.

The trouble with the two free location finding apps is if you can find someone, they can also locate you. It’s like seeing someone in a mirror: if you can see them, they can see you. An actual tracking device ramps this up to a whole new level.

You can slip “PocketFinder” into a child’s backpack, Grandma’s purse, or your teenager’s car. Once in place, load the PocketFinder application into any Internet-connected device and you can then zoom right down to street level to pinpoint your loved ones’ location, or track a vehicle to within ten feet. The map can be customized so that alerts are sent back if the person or vehicle enters or leaves a defined area on foot or in a vehicle. Speed alerts can be set to notify you if a vehicle exceeds set speed limits. The alerts are sent by email, text message and push notification. (“Push” is when a message pops up on your screen.)

The PocketFinder will be sold later this month at the online Apple store or an Apple retail store, in two editions. However, its use is not confined to Apple, but can be used with any device that can connect to the Internet. (The app for using it with Apple devices is simply a new upgrade to already existing software.)

The PocketFinder GPS Personal Locator is $149. The PocketFinder GPS Vehicle Locator is $189. Both carry a monthly fee for tracking but the initial purchase includes two free months. Ongoing monthly wireless connectivity charges are $13. NOTE: This is not the only device that will do this kind of tracking and send alert notices. We did a search on the Web and found similar services for about the same price, but we can’t review them all. So you should do some web browsing to find the one that suits you best.

If you just need a device to help you find your own location, like when you’re lost in the woods or the giant downtown parking garage, do a search on “GPS locators.” We did this and noticed that the “Bushnell GPS Backtrack” got good reviews. To use it, you push a button to mark your starting location. Then go off to the mall or into the woods and the device will keep giving you arrows pointing the direction to go in until you’re back at your car or destination.

InReach is the first personal communicator with Iridium Global Satellite coverage and an Android interface. It claims to cover 90 percent of the Earth’s surface (and maybe a few places under it, since it also claims to be waterproof).

The device can be used by itself or paired with an Android smartphone. To use it as a standalone device, you would send pre-loaded text messages (Like: “Went up the Amazon today. Hot.”) and activate remote tracking. The remote tracking would let someone find you when your mosquito repellent ran out. LED lights flash when your message has been received. There’s also an SOS key. When paired with an Android you can do two-way text messaging. You can also post to Facebook and Twitter.

The InReach will be available in October for $250, plus a $10 a month subscription. Don’t forget to bring a paddle.

The first GPS unit that lets you send text messages is supposed to be coming out July 31. It’s the “Earthmate PN-60w” from Delorme.com. (Catchy title, eh?)

Messages are conveyed via satellite and are not dependent on cell phone coverage, so you can send them even in the deepest darkest jungle. The PN-60w is ruggedized and waterproof, in case you are in one of those movies where you fall into the river and are swept downstream over the rapids.

Users can send messages to email addresses, cell phones, buddy lists, and social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, Fire Eagle, SpotAdventures.com, or Geocaching.com, complete with GPS coordinates. (Help! I’m floating downstream on the Amazon.) The map coordinates will help, even if they change as you move along.

The device comes with North America GPS, topographic maps and street coverage for the U.S. and Canada. Nautical charts, aerial images, natural resource maps, and other locations, are available by subscription. This “”save me,” or “I am here” device does not come cheap: you can pre-order it for $550 at Amazon.com.

Too bad it’s so expensive at $200. You could just use your GPS phone instead and go to  geocaching.com.

The eXplorist comes out in April. Magellan is also sponsoring a trash pick-up day to aid the environment. See magellangps.com.

Bob says he can go right to his car in any parking lot. But Joy says she once hunted for hers for at least a half hour.

Park’n Find from Affinicore, is a 99 cents iPhone app that helps you find your parked car, using the iPhone GPS. Besides geo-tagging your car, you can add notes, voice memos and photos. The app displays an arrow showing you which way to walk.

The advanced GPS and mapping features will not work well in an underground parking garage. However, Park’n Find is designed to be useful in all parking situations.  There are rotating selectors which allow you to record details like garage level, row, section, spot, etc.  You can also attach a voice memo and one or more photos.  If the phone can receive a cellular or Wi-Fi signal in the underground parking garage it should be able to approximate the physical address of the parking structure as well.

Google Phone

Recently we wrote about Google Maps Navigation, the first completely free GPS system with turn-by-turn spoken directions. The bad news was that it was only available on the Motorola Droid. The good news is that now you can get the same GPS system for the earlier Android operating system, version 1.6. This includes the T-Mobile G1 and myTouch 3G phones.

And if you read today’s news, you also know that Google is coming out with a Google phone, called the Nexus One, early next year.  The software it uses for making free Internet calls comes from a company called Gizmo5. You won’t have to sign up with any wireless carrier to get the phone. It will come unlocked. Regular phone calls might be free or subsidized by ads. Details here.

GPS (Global Positioning Systems) has become common in new cell phones. And of course there are many other GPS devices, such as Tom-Tom, Magellan, Garmin, DeLorme and Microsoft Streets and Trips. But one of the complaints we hear from readers is that getting new maps for some of these devices can cost $100 a year or more and are needed every time you change regions or countries. The Google map updates for the Android phone are both free and automatic.

The first phone to have Google Maps is the new “Moto Droid,” out in November. This is a $199 Motorola phone (after a $100 rebate) that uses the Verizon Wireless network. The “Droid” doesn’t just speak, it listens. You can use voice commands to search the web or find things stored on the phone: people’s names, music, photos, etc.

The Droid requires a voice and Internet plan from Verizon, which together cost $70 a month. At first glance this seems to negate the “free” part of Google’s map service, but the Internet access is essential not just for maps and voice directions, but for email, photo transmission and of course browsing the web.

The “Droid” will have access to more than 12,000 applications using Verizon’s high-speed 3G network. Users will be able to run six applications at once. The Droid phone itself comes with a five megapixel camera, a 16 gigabyte memory card, integrated Gmail and Microsoft Exchange email, and can record videos and transmit them to YouTube in two clicks. It has a slide-out physical keyboard. There are a ton of features with this phone and you can get more information at droiddoes.com.

The way to avoid expensive map upgrades is to use Google maps with your GPS device. Garmin and TomTom, the leading makers of GPS devices, both allow you to hook your computer to your GPS device and transfer Google maps. These are all free from “Maps.Google.com” and they are available for locations worldwide.