GPS,
Calabash World Explorer, your GPS-based tour guide to paradise
By Cyrus Farivar 
posted Dec 13th 2006 1:16AM
posted Dec 13th 2006 1:16AM
While we've covered a lot of GPS devices in our day, we've never seen one that appears to come with a tropical flower adorning its digital visage. The Calabash World Explorer, built by a new US Virgin Islands-based technology tourism startup, is loaded up with what we assume are local maps and an audio tour guide to help guide you around St. Thomas. It'll play your music and show photos, and also includes an "encyclopedia" (which we'll assume is Virgin Islands-focused). We've got no idea what kind of hardware it's got inside the curvaceous case, nor how much renting one of these things costs, but that flower better come in the box or someone's getting an umbrella drink thrown in their face.
you can also get these in paris. they are called taocity guides. its a fujitsu pda running some software of paris monumenmts
But does it say "Do Not Panic" in large, friendly letters on the cover?
That looks like an otterbox PDA case. I use them to protect Dell Axim's for a farming application. No idea whats in the box, but I'm pretty sure the the case is just a case.
Another french company called cityzeum provides a similar solution http://www.cityzeum.com targeting GPS PDA for hotels...
It looks like they also provide custom guide generation and download to iPod, TomTom and PDA.
I spoke with a Dev at Calabash and he said that it is a custom WM5 device in a ruggedized shell that can withstand water. The specs for the hardware are: 400 MHzS3C2440, 20 channel SiRFstarIII GPS, WIFI, Bluetooth, 5 gig memory, 2 day battery.
They offer a host of more advanced features and more in depth content than the Paris guides. No flower on the box, although there are thousands of photos inside its content.
There appear to be many devices and packages appearing based on the concept of GPS tourism. It will be interesting to see if a platform emerges that allows users to create their own content based on standardized devices (WM5 PDA?), and easy to use content creation tools (geotagging routes, audio and images).
jack
http://motomappr.com
It is big, bulky and at this time, only one person can listen to it. When on St Thomas I looked at one and realized I might as well carry my laptop around my neck (remember the BIG 80's cordless phones?). There is not that much content on it that is helpful and who wants to "work" when your on vacation, my opinion is that the island is small enough that you do not need a gps to direct you around the island, by the time you figure this thing out, your already usually where you need to be, at the stores, beach or bar. If you drink to much rum punch (which most of us do) good luck on trying to finger touch the screen for your information. Here is an idea, if you get to lost, just follow the people in front of you, their pretty much all headed in the same direction. shopping, beach, or bar!
There is a unit in Kona Hawaii that we found fantastic. It had over 600 points of interest and every public restroom anywhere near a highway. The island is so big and the Hawaiian words all look the same after while. Tour Guide Hawaii was simple to use and very helpful to us in creating our own vacation our way, and at 22.00 per day, it was very affordable. Next time we go to Kona, we will definitely get one again.
Check out http://www.geovative.com where you can create your own tours with audio, image, and text descriptions and then download them to your GPS device!