BlackBerryInsight

As you can see, I have some favorite programs and I like to blog about them. One of them is “Spot”. It’s user manual tells us this an abbreviation of “Skylab’s positioning and orientation tool”. The new version comes with some incredible new features I was always requesting. Of course, I requested more. Anyway, I love the new ones like “Map Configuration Saving”. This means, it is now automatically saved ones you make changes in the map’s layer manger. As Spot supports several kinds of maps like OGC WMS map services you can also add your custom web server whichholds your private (or company driven) map data. Since the first version came out you could add your custom WMS to the map layers. That’s no news. But this setting could not be saved. Bad – very bad because this forced you to enter the information every time you restarted the program. Also the currently activated map was not saved so every time the default map appeared you had to change the map setting on every restart of the program. This is all gone!

There is also another new feature I would like to mention. The so called “Location State Indicator”. This is a neat point with the colors green, yellow and red. This indicator shows you the current state of your GPS:

• Green: GPS is available and delivers a position
• Yellow: The GPS device is searching and tries to find satellites
• Red: GPS is out of service

This means you are always aware of what is going on.

One bad thing, the Google Maps has been removed from the layer list. This layer didn’t work since 2 or 3 weeks so this is not so bad. I guess Google changed something in their API. Whatever, I don’t miss that layer there is also another new one which provides street level data as well. This new one is not as nice rendered as the Google Maps one but it brings the data and works fine. And, as mentioned before, you can add your own map server as well.

There are now new shortcuts to zoom levels and several maps in the screen menu of the “Map” screen:

• Zoom:Country
• Zoom:Region
• Zoom:City
• Zoom:Street
• Map:Satellite
• Map:Topo 1
• Map:Topo 2
• Map:Streetlevel

Quite convenient to use! If you would ask me.

Ah, one more thing to mention: The update is free for all current users of “Spot”. You just need to get the new files from the product site and overwrite your old one. The new version is released for all platforms including BlackBerry, Palm, Symbian, Nokia, Siemens, Motorola and other Java mobile devices.

Related Links:
Spot GPS Tool supports BlackBerry 8703e
Spot – new devices supported (BlackBerry 8707g and Palm Treo 680)
Spot supports the Pearl officially
BlackBerry and GPS
New Version of Spot GPS Application Released by Dave Mabe – the author of BlackBerry Hacks

Looking for a Bluetooth GPS Receiver? Take a look to our Recommended BT GPS Receivers!