Bio: We are Martin Riddiford and Jim Reeves, London based designers who have spent 4 years developing GravityLight as an off-line project. We work for therefore.com, which has over 20 years of experience in designing and developing hand held computing and communication products for a host of pioneers including Psion, Toshiba, NEC, TomTom, Inmarsat, ICO, Sepura, Racal Acoustics, Voller Energy, FreePlay and SolarAid.

We’re using a tried and tested manufacturer who has the right expertise to make GravityLight. We have some links to partner organisations in Africa and need to do the same for India. If you're part of an organisation and would like to get involved then please contact us.

TomTom *commercial

I totally just bought a TomTom.

I did.

>> ^Sagemind:

promote
Thanks to dystopianfuturetoday's embed, we can now see it.
Let the voting begin again... until @<a rel="nofollow" href="http://maatc.videosift.com" title="member since April 17th, 2007" class="profilelink"><strong style="color: rgb(18, 18, 113);">maatc replaces the embed at the top!


DONE! Thanks a bunch!

Garmin units were never for finding your routes on a road through town. They are for finding your route through 200 miles of first-growth forest, staking your claim, then being able to return without getting lost and dying of starvation. They were for finding your favourite fishing spot, 300 nautical miles of the coast of nowhere, to find each of the 350 crab traps you set over 200 sq miles of ocean.

Tomtom is scared, Garmin is not. Street routing is something they added on, not their only reason for being.

I only use my GPS when I don't know where I am, such as when I'm driving cross country. I might be interested in this when the entire Pennsylvania Highway system and all of I-70, has G3+ connectivity, until then, paying $100 a month for the service required to make this work seem a little steep compared with the $100 I paid for the lifetime use of my TomTom.

Hey, I think the demo was awesome too, but lets be realistic here...

Apple and Google had a falling out over maps on the iPhone, so don't expect this to ever show up on that device. Apple is attempting to go it alone for maps now, which might be a poor result considering how good Google Maps was on the iPhone. What it will hurt are commercial GPS apps on the iPhone.

In the meantime, for reasons shole stated this will NOT be the death of normal GPS. A standalone device can be had now for $100-$150 when an Android phone is significantly higher priced not to mention the monthly fee. Your standalone device will literally work in the middle of nowhere and your Android is tied to your mobile cell coverage. No signal = no maps. Standalone GPS devices were hot items for Christmas because of convenience, low cost, and they have significantly better battery life than your average smartphone.

I can only hope though it also improves the quality of said standalone devices, which have their own problems like charging far too much for map updates and/or clunky + slow interfaces that respond as well as attempting to swim through mud. If Google released a non-Android GPS that did what this demo does in a say a $200 device, THEN Garmin/Tomtom can start to panic.

Countdown to patent violation lawsuits and injunction requests from Garmin, Magellan and TomTom in 3...2...1

same here. my contract ended last month, i'm specifically waiting til the new iphone surfaces and then i'm grabbing one.

my girlfriend got the current version last year and i have to say, the pros far outweigh the cons, most of which will be wiped out with the new software release anyway. the gripes i have are... no landscape keyboard (will be fixed), no video recording (again, fixed) and no copy paste (fixed). plus, as you mentioned, you've got the introduction of the tomtom app which negates the need for a seperate satnav and the find my iphone remote wipe thingy which just makes me geek-giddy.

i'm just glad i don't have to rely on at&t for anything. sounds like they fucking suck.

the "uncle tomtom"?

The research and development department at TomTom is busy finalizing the features for their upcoming TomTom Go 1100, including the new TrafficEliminator. This reloadable traffic management device promises to be user installable, and as with all TomTom features, accessible via a simple touchscreen interface.