Coolest Gadgets

At the CES show in Las Vegas, Trimble has announced a way to get more use out of the GPS ready phone that you likely already have.

The full expected rollout is late January 2007 for their Guideworks GPS solution.

What it does is use your existing phone’s GPS chip in cooperation with their software, together you can use them to:map out a trip, tag pictures taken with your phone with GPS coordinates, share trip data online,a compass and even geo-caching adventures.

This suite and the other solutions they’ve created make your phone do more than you ever thought it could (ok, so

some of your surf the web for who knows what on them, but this is really cool too!) Now you can even track your workouts and play them back over google earth! Not too shabby!

The best thing about this is that it likely uses a phone you probably already have. It’s very simple software to activate.

I was lucky enough to be able to see this in action a few weeks ago with a simple Java applet running on a regular handheld phone. While a buddy and I streaked across the farmlands of central California we could see a little dot (that was us) moving along a scrolling google map. It was really something!

Of all these new features,I have to say I’m most excited about the workout tracking function. I think if the iPhone has the proper GPS chip, this could make it even more interesting than we ever considered! (gosh now we’ve just got to wait to hear what Stevie says tomorrow!!!