An indepth review of the Garmin GPS (Oregon 400t) handheld GPS device. This GPS device has it all, routes, tracks, easy interface, rugged, waterproof, reliable, good battey life, GeoCaching, Off road maps and many other great features.
I have just bought the Oregon Garmin GPS 400t handheld system to help me find my way around the countryside wilderness. This came about by walking up Scarfell Pike with my son on holiday in the Lake District – and getting very lost in the thick fog and mists! I realised at the time how good it would have been to have a handheld device that actually showed me the way home and even told me when I was getting lost.
Whilst I can find my way around a OS (Ordnance Survey) map with a good and trusty compass – there are times when you are totally LOST! You just need to find your way out of a mess. The Garmin GPS Oregon 400t is loaded up with full treking maps. The Garmin GPS Oregon 400t stores information on the device as well as an SD card that can store new maps. The device is really easy to use and completely waterproof (when you drop it in that stream by mistake).
The Oregon 400t – Garmin GPS has so many facilities I wont list them all here; it’s really a computer dedicated to maps and off-road trekking. I found many open source and free software applications that work really well with this device. The Oregon 400t comes with a USB interface cable that connects to a PC. That’s not all. The Garmin GPS Oregon 400t will upload and download routes and tracks to and from the PC. I have found this really useful to create routes using free applications and then upload the walks to the device. This way I can work out how far the walk is, how long it will take and what the terrain will be (really useful if your walking with kids!).
Free software I’ve found that is REALLY useful with the Garmin Oregon 400t:
http://www.marengo-ltd.com/map/
A free web application. Plot your route on a Google Map scene by drawing waypoints. The waypoints are joined together for you to form a route. The final walk (route) is then shown in GPX format. GPX files are a format that the Garmin GPS Oregon 400t fully understands, the files describe the information needed to create the route in an XML format. The saved GPX file can be saved onto your Garmin GPS Oregon 400t. All you have to do is walk the route!
http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/
Another free web application. OK, so you’ve walked the walk and got back home. NOW you need to copy the route from the Garmin GPS Oregon 400t that you actually walked (track) to the PC and then upload to this online web application. GpsVisualizer will then draw you a nice map of “where” you walked. In practice I found the combination of the above two tools perfect. I could display both the ‘route’ and the ‘track’ with this one application to see where I should of walked and where I actually did walk! Almost everything you need to use the Garmin GPS Oregon 400t in one place.
http://www.geocaching.com/
So, you’ve planned the walk. Now you need to persuade the kids that this will actually do them some good… Yep, a hard task indeed. Well geocaching.com could be the answer. This website allows you to search your area (postcode/Zipcode) or your planned walk (see above!) for geocaches. Geocaches are locations on maps where people hide little stashes. The Garmin GPS Oregon 400t fully supports GeoCaching and will show you the nearest GeoCache wherever you happen to be. It couldn’t be simpler to download the GeoCache information onto the Garmin GPS Oregon 400t either. The hidden cache (usually a small box hidden in the countryside somewhere) normally contains a guest book and a few goodies. Great fun for the kids. If you are lucky enough to find one of these GeoCaches, you can sign the book and even take something from the cache – AS LONG AS YOU REPLACE IT WITH SOMETHING ELSE! Anyway GREAT for the kids (and adults), and they don’t realise they are getting excercise.
http://www.everytrail.com
If you’re pressed for time and don’t fancy plotting your own route before thw walk, why not pop over to everytrail.com and pop in your location, it will show you all the walks other people have uploaded for the area selected. NOT ONLY THAT! you can download the walks in (yes you guessed it…) in GPX format. The format that you can upload directly onto your Garmin GPS Oregon 400t.
A web based wizard system that uses a very easy to use online interface to find domain names, it’s also very fast and effective by combining words in different ways. It’s basic features are:
Find domain names
Word Combiner in multiple sequences
Relating words – key words – description
Creates list of words (also using it’s built in thesaurus)
Combinations and other techniques to quickly find unique names
Shows whats available – VERY QUICKLY
Similar words can be easily added
You can also:
Add prefixes
Add suffixes
Can sort easily using various criteria
A nice feature is “Quality” sorting (best domains first)
Add the word “ly” or “ster” or “i”, etc. in front of the domain
You can Pluralise words
Type a domain name in directly and show if available
Whois will check availability
Results can be saved for later use, you can then choose which registrar to use to register your domain names. The selection of ISP’s is comprehensive and actually shows you the cost of the registration, which is really helpful.
I especially liked the addition of being able to create groups, and then drag words into the groups to differentiate good or bad domain names from the results. This really helped to weed out the final list of domain names to register. If you add the ability to go directly to a decent selection of ISP’s and directly register from the site, it makes this a wonderful and easy to use system.
In summary, a very effective online tool to find a unique domain name given a list of key words. I give this a 5 star rating and have used it many times to find really good domain names. Domain name creation can be a real chore, with this tool it almost becomes both an enjoyable experience and and easy one!
Floola is a freeware application to efficiently manage your iPod or your Motorola mobile phone (any model supporting iTunes except iPhone and iPod touch). It’s a standalone application that can be run directly from your iPod and needs no installation under Linux (any GTK2 distro), Mac OS X (10.3.9 or newer!) and Windows (98 or newer, including Vista).
Manage Music, Videos, Podcast and Photos all in one simple app, anywhere on any computer.
Installation of floola merely involves unzipping the distribution and copying the .exe file to your iPod root directory. You can then run the application to manage all your music, download podcasts, images, smart playlists and synchronise with Outlook all from the iPod – no additional software is required. The process is very easy and quick. I haven’t found any issues with the software.
Floola works on multi-platforms; Windows (from 98), MAC and any Linux distribution. Floola also integrates well with last.fm. Adding files to you iPod is now just a question of drag and drop onto the Floola interface – it couldn’t be easier. Other really handy features include a search for duplicate files, search for ‘lost’ files on the iPod, easy addition of videos, automatic conversion of audio and video that are not in recognized formats, synchronisation with Google calendars, export playlists to HTML – it will even try to FIX a iPod that is not working properly!
Clearly an essential addition to your software if you do not want to have to rely on iTunes and its limitations.
Simple point & click enrichment of your blog posts (and emails). In real-time, while you type. We suggest tags, links, photos, and related articles. You save time and aspirin.
5M+ pictures, 5M+ articles. 10M+ possibilities. Just add this addin to Firefox and blog directly from your browser with the ‘press this’ option within wordpress. You can then automatically add links, images and other important blog links to your post with the click on the mouse.
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