gps

Today, ALK Technology, the company behind the popular CoPilot sat-nav apps for iOS and Android has announced support for Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 (x86), bringing both paid and free apps to the platform in the coming weeks.

For those who don’t remember, CoPilot goes way back with Microsoft having integrated the first GPS system in a Windows laptop and even selling Pocket CoPilot for PocketPC. In other words, this sat-nav owes a lot of its legacy to Microsoft’s systems all the way up to Windows Mobile 6.5 (Flashback: Our CoPilot 8 review from 2009).

The company backed away from Windows Phone 7 though instead concentrating on iOS and Android. Part of the problem was also their complaint about managed code being difficult to work with for their system. Of course with such a complaint one would expect them to jump back in as soon as native code access was granted and sure enough, they have today.

Growing up, ‘X’ always marked the spot, problem was my lack of treasure maps. Fast forward to 2013 and anyone with a GPS device can find buried treasure. Ladies and gentlemen, geocaching can make anyone of you a pirate for a day and we now have a great app for Windows Phone to live out those swashbuckling fantasies. But before you get your Captain Jack cosplay on, how about you read into Geocaching Live for Windows Phone.

One of the troubles with running a dedicated Windows Phone site is that you need to cater to the pro users and the new folks who have just picked up their first device. This post is for them, the new people.

On Windows Phone 8 you may often see a little dot-in-a-circle icon appear in the upper right hand side on your screen. It seemingly pops up randomly and due to the amount of forum threads on the matter, it has caused some confusion. So what is it?...

Update - Version 3.0 is now live in the Marketplace as we just got the notification! Link after the break...

Although we’re still seeing version 2.0 for Nokia Drive on our Lumia, Nokia has finally pulled the covers of their highly anticipated version 3.0 which should be hitting the Marketplace in the next 24-48 hours. It has us so excited, we’re almost yearning to get lost just so we can use it.

Version 3.0, in our opinion, finally makes Drive the app we all wanted and expected from Nokia—sure the other versions were nice, especially for free, but they paled to the pay apps of Garmin, etc.

Dear phone, we're not in Akron!

Update: Nokia just pinged us to let us know they are "...aware of the issue and it has been addressed, but users may need to restart their phones to see the fix take effect." Moreover, this does not seem to be a Lumia 900 issue per se but rather related to AT&T's LTE towers. Evidently some Android users have had this problem too.

It looks like the Nokia Lumia 900 on AT&T is experiencing yet another odd and seemingly random bug these days. For some users, when they fire up a GPS application such as Maps, Local Scout, Foursquare (for checkins) or Yelp, they show up as being in Akron, Ohio despite not actually being there.

The issue first popped up in Nokia's support forums with two threads and a handful of users noting the problem. Another thread appeared here in the Windows Phone Central Forums as well. But to be honest, we had only received one email complaint on the matter from reader Alex T. and we had not seen this bug ourselves to verify--so off it went into the "quirks" pile for further investigation.

This week though as we're paling around with Rafael Rivera and Paul Thurrott in sunny San Francisco, both of their devices suddenly had this happen. First up was Thurrott who's phone just would not budge from the great state of Ohio. Despite soft-resets, some toggling and a boatload of swearing, there it stayed.

Later that night, Rivera's phone did the exact same thing when we were at Denny's. What was curious though was how both phones, even when placed next to each other, did not have the bug at the same time. Both Lumia 900s, both on AT&T, yet one worked and the other did not. (Our 900 was in tow but we were using the Focus 2 as our primary device this week).

We're not sure if this is related to AT&Ts network for aGPS, an issue with full GPS or maybe something in between. We have noticed that more folks seem to experience it on the West coast but that could just be sampling error. 

So we figured we would crowdsource this a bit and ask you if you've experienced this on your Lumia 900. And if so, what state are you in? Hit the poll below. (And for our international users, have you had something similar?).

With all the hype Nokia devices get especially with their onslaught of custom software, we figured we'd throw a bone to the rest of you who aren't on the Lumia train.

In case you missed it, Nokia launched the beta of City Lens today. A nifty little app that uses the camera, gyroscope, compass, GPS and internet to show you in real-time where shops, coffee houses and restaurants can be found. It's certainly well done but not particularly original (see LG's ScanSearch app from 2011).

But in case you own an HTC or Samsung phone and want to have the same functionality there's a great free option already out there: Wikitude.

Actually, Wikitude does even more than City Lens since it's more robust with search features. It's been around for awhile and is found on competing platforms making it more widely supported. It hooks into Yelp, Twitter, Flickr, Starbucks and more. Heck, their system even has APIs so dev's can integrate Wikitude's services into their own apps.

Did we mention it's also a lot fun? Sure, seeing people literally tweeting around you is borderline creepy but it's also a bit fascinating.

The app is free too meaning there's little reason for you not to give it a try, even if you use Nokia's City Lens. We found the service to be quite accurate and useful when traveling around the city.

Pick up Wikitude here in the Windows Phone Marketplace. Let us know in comments how you think it compares to City Lens (if you have both).

GPS Calculator is a tool box of sorts for your Windows Phone GPS.  The app won't appeal to everyone but it helps you determine distances, coordinates, and areas of maps (here's our review).  If you are in need of such tools, it's a very nice app and was recently updated to version 5.0.

GPS Calculator's new features include:

• Sharing of location in any supported format via sms, email or social
• Time zone, local time and sunrise-sunset calculations for any location
• A new Altimeter function where you can not only view elevation profile graphs and get current GPS elevation, but also compare it using five different elevation data models.

The GPS Calculator Version 5 update also adds support for:

• SRTM3 (shuttle radar topography mission)
• ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) which is a high resolution imaging instrument that is flying on the Terra satellite
• GTOPO30 (global digital elevation model from topo maps)
• USGS elevation data
• Google’s elevation data web service

GPS Calculator is not a tool for everyone.  It isn't a navigation app to take you from point A to B.  But if you feel a little geeky about GPS technology, or just want to learn about it – you should give GPS Calculator a try.

GPS Calculator is a free, ad free app for your Windows Phone that you can snatch up over here at the Windows Phone Marketplace.

Thanks, Kitya, for the tip!

Enjoy golf? Own a Windows Phone? Fancy saving $30 on a top golf app available on the platform? Executive Caddie, winner of the Windows Phone App Challenge, has had its price slashed to $0 and is within reach for anyone on a tight budget after the present purchasing spree. The 20 year old golf analysis software is a golfer's best friend when aiming for the hole-in-one. 

The Windows Phone app sports a highly accurate golf course database, on-course GPS and scorecard functionality (for up to four golfers). The GPS assistance boasts some impressive features:

• Easily see distance to front, back, and center of the green.
• Easily see layup distance to the 100, 150, and 200.
• Aerial Map View showing the entire course layout.
• Map View fairway markers and rings for the 100, 150, and 200.
• Waypoints/markers for front, back, center, layups, bunkers, hazards, etc.
• Zoom to your current position, the green, or the fairway.

You can download Executive Caddie from the Marketplace for absolutely nothing over the festive holiday (normally $30).