The UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) uses a Skywalker X-8 FPV Flying Wing for its frame and it has been equipped with a Qauntum RTR Bomb System. The release mechanism doesn’t drop bombs, though, as the mailing tube-style canister is used to hold your precious Mexican-inspired wrap of a meal. After entering the destination, the restaurant can send the Burrito Bomber on its way and it will navigate on its own with an ArduPilot control system. This uses waypoints to ensure the drone is heading the right way, but they can use manual controls via the on-board video camera too.

When the Burrito Bomber arrives at its destinations, it drops the burrito with a parachute. And that’s it. You get your lunch, the UAV returns back to home base, and you don’t have to deal with the pizza delivery guy that’s late because of gridiron traffic.

[Source]

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AJ Dellinger from Digital Trends put together an in-depth comparison of the two mapping apps and has come to the conclusion that, yes, Google Maps is vastly superior to Apple Maps. A big part of this has to do with the fact that Google is in the business of data and Google Maps is simply an extension of that.

The user interface is both more intuitive and faster on Google Maps, typically required “half as many taps” as Apple Maps to get the same task accomplished. Google Maps has better viewing modes, making it easier to see the streets, as well as having better traffic data. While Apple’s Flyover is nice, Street View is still much more usable and more widespread.

He goes on to say that Google Maps has better search (no surprise there), better directions and navigation, better public transit support (more data), and better destination information with Google+ Local and Zagat.

If you have iOS6, you really should get Google Maps. You don’t want to get stranded in the middle of the Outback with a worse user interface, worse destination information, and no Flyover in less populated areas (like the Australian Outback).

[Source]

The post Comparing Google Maps on iOS vs. Apple Maps appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Frustrated with getting stuck with boxed iPhone apps on your iPad?  Cydia has had a tweak available for jailbroken iPads, called FullForce that could be the perfect solution.  FullForce forces iPhone apps to full screen without distortion and without the 2x zoom that iOS already provides.

Cydia keeps a list of apps that are compatible with its tweak and just added to that list is Google’s newly released iOS version of Maps.

The new app runs flawlessly using FullForce except for a few minor things like the sidebar.  Hopefully Google just releases an app made for the iPad, but until then this does nicely to bridge the obvious gaps in the current map app.

Do you prefer Google Maps to Apple Apps?  Would you like to see a way to make it the default map app for iPads?

[ source ]

The post Cydia’s Fullforce Tweak for Jailbroken iPads Compatible With Google Maps appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

That line comes by way of Australian police officials. More specifically, the police of Victoria are urging motorists to avoid using Apple Maps altogether, because the inaccurate directions could lead people into the middle of the Australian Outback. Remember that when you get lost in the Outback, you really are in the middle of nowhere. You could be left with no food, no water, no gas stations, and no shelter from the potentially sweltering heat.

Apple Maps is, for whatever reason, placing the town of Mildura about 70km away from its actual location. People trying to get to Mildura, using Apple Maps, are instead ending up in Murray Sunset National Park and “there is no water supply within the Park and temperatures can reach as high as 46 degrees [Celsius].”

It’s one thing to get annoyed at being sent to the wrong part of town when you want to visit a certain store; it’s another thing altogether to end up in a situation where you could die by dehydration and heat exhaustion. Be sure to review those driving directions to make sure they make sense before you actually start driving!

So are Apple Maps really all that bad? Honestly, it depends on where you live. In some parts of the world, Apple has already done enough to update its maps and ensure improved accuracy. In other places, like parts of Australia, you might want to use them at your own risk.

[Source]

The post Apple Maps Could Be “Potentially Life Threatening” appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

Some people will tell you that standalone GPS devices have gone the way of the dinosaur thanks to the rise of fully capable smartphones, but I disagree. Many of those apps still require you to have an active data connection and you either want to conserve that data bucket or you may not have a connection while on the open road. And when you can get a quality GPS for half price, you can’t really turn down that navigational opportunity.

Take the Garmin nuvi 1390LMT as a prime example. The regular list price for this GPS navigator is $229.99, but Amazon has slashed that price in half down to $114.99. This is mostly because there is a newer model out, but this version is still very solid. You don’t have to worry about getting outdated maps either, because this comes with free lifetime maps and traffic. This way, you always have the most up-to-date maps, POIs and navigation information.

As far as the core specs go, there’s a 4.3-inch TFT color touchscreen, preloaded City Navigator NT North America, and integrated Bluetooth with a mic and speaker for hands-free calling. The “advanced navigation features” shouldn’t be ignored either. The standard voice-prompted turn-by-turn directions are nice, but you get voiced street names, lane assist with junction view (I can’t stress enough how useful this is), and something called “ecoRoute” to help you save fuel.

I have one of these myself and it works like a dream. I paid more than this sale price for sure, so be sure to snatch up the Garmin nuvi 1390LMT for $114.99 on Amazon while you can. And yes, that includes free shipping.

The post Garmin nuvi 1390LMT Portable Bluetooth GPS Navigator for Half Price appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

When you’ve parked your stolen bike somewhere (and you’ve presumably locked it up some way too), you activate the SpyBike with a special keyring. If during this time the SpyBike detects that it’s on the move, you’ll get a text message on your phone. Meanwhile, the SpyBike also goes to work by GPS tracking its whereabouts, which you can then view through the free website. The battery can last “for months between charges so long as you remember to disarm the tracker before riding your bike.”

The SpyBike won’t help you if the bike recovery turns to violence, but at least it can tell you where you can find the bike. While there is no monthly charge for the actual GPS tracking service, the SpyBike does require you to install an active SIM card so that it can send you those text messages. This also serves the secondary function of using aGPS via GSM where the primary GPS is less effective. The SpyBike product itself is £97.50, or about $152 US.

[Source]

The post SpyBike Lets You Secretly GPS Track Your Stolen Bicycle appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

One of the many changes that you’ll find in iOS 6 is the departure away from Google Maps and toward Apple’s own Maps app based on OpenStreetMap data. So, which is better and how do they compare? The best way to determine that is to look at them side by side.

You might already be familiar with the look and feel of the new Apple Maps, since Foursquare recently jumped ship over to OpenStreetMap too. It’s very fresh and clean-looking, but that comes at a significant price: it lacks details. When you look at the equivalent Google Maps image for the same area, you’ll find that Google bombards you with much more information about street names, transit stops, and points of interest. You only start to get some of this extra information when you zoom in quite a bit, which can be annoying if you’re trying to look for a specific street.

Similarly, traffic on Apple Maps is still quite lacking in information, but the crowdsourced nature of OpenStreetMap will hopefully improve that as iOS 6 is adopted by more people. Both Google Maps and Apple Maps do a good job of providing directions, but they do have their respective strengths: Google Maps can give you public transit directions, but Apple Maps can give you turn-by-turn directions. Google Maps is also the only one with Street View at the moment, though Apple Maps has that Flyover feature.

The shift to greater simplicity has always been a part of Apple’s M.O., so it’s not really surprising to see that Apple Maps is generally simpler than its Google counterpart. It’s simplicity at the price of more robust information.

[Source]

The post New Apple Maps for iOS 6 vs. Google Maps Comparison appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

The concept comes by way of Exertion Games Lab at RMIT University in Melbourne. What they’ve done is taken the standard Parrot AR.Drone quadracopter and loaded it with some specialized software. By doing so, the drone will lock in on the user (you) and follow you around as you go for your run around the neighborhood. It’s also designed to help you maintain a certain pace, so if you start to lag behind, it’ll fly on ahead and “motivate” you to keep up. Because you wouldn’t want to lose your $300+ toy.

There is definitely room for improvement, of course. You could equip Joggobot to keep the path lit when you go for a run at night, for example, or they could set it up to have better controls… perhaps with Kinect-esque motion-based waving to get the Joggobot to speed up or slow down. The other snag is the 20-minute battery life, which doesn’t leave you with a very big window for a good jog.

[Source]

The post Joggobot, Your Flying Robot Running Friend (Video) appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

There’s a lot of high-tech stuff going on in the recent Avengers movie, but perhaps even more interesting is the glimpse we get inito the future of computing through those user interfaces.

We’ve seen the inside of Iron Man’s helmet before, showing us the heads-up display that Robert Downey Jr. uses to monitor the status of his suit and to target all the bad guys. There’s a lot of information being flashed at him all at once and you almost get the sense that they represent the evolution of the homescreen widget.

You’ll also notice that a lot of the displays are transparent. That’s already happening, to a certain extent, by Samsung and other companies. And again, we get those fancy blinking widgets again. You might also remember the scene where a window can be “swiped” over from one workstation to the next.

There is a lot of detail going on with these user interfaces. You can thank freelance visual artist Jayse Hansen, who was responsible for that work in The Avengers. It does make me wonder if these UIs are closer in scope to the future of Windows, Apple, or something else entirely.

I also wonder if the menu at the shawarma place is going to look like this one day…

[Source]

The post Transparent Avengers UI Represents Future of Computing? appeared first on Mobile Magazine.

You may not have any problems finding a building in a busy city via the GPS receiver in your handset, but it won’t be helpful once you step inside one. How will you find the elevator or the bathroom or the fire exit? This problem could soon be a thing of the past all thanks to a new system, called the MST-Smartsense Sensor, from Fraunhofer which uses simple sensors to enable in-building navigation. They have introduced a tiny module that could work with tablets and smartphones.

All you have to do is enter the building and scan a QR code, and your current position will be displayed on your mobile device. When you start moving around, the system’s built-in pedometer and compass will determine your speed and direction. No GPS required here as it can tell your location based on stride length.

These include an acceleration sensor that registers the motion of the body, and a magnetic field sensor that measures the alignment of the body through its position in relation to the earth‘s magnetic field. In tandem, they map a highly precise movement pattern. “Sensor fusion” is the term von Rosenberg uses to refer to such intelligent coupling of multiple sensors. The fascinating thing is that the module does not have to be calibrated by the user. On its own, it detects if the individual has long legs, or is just taking baby steps.

The system comes equipped with its own processor and needs less power to work. But the same feature could be made available via a modern mobile device provided it has a built-in pedometer. But do you really need such a system to find your way around in a building? It certainly would be very useful for those of you who have a tendency to get lost in big indoor locations like malls.

The post Indoor Sensor Allows Navigation Inside Buildings appeared first on Mobile Magazine.