Spot and MobileTracker for BlackBerry now support the Curve 8900

Nearly every new BlackBerry Wireless Handheld is now equipped with an internation GPS receiver.

Mobile GPS applications and location based services seem to be rising as much as other mobile apps do. The often reviewed GPS application software Spot and MobileTracker do now officially support the BlackBerry Curve 8900.

Spot is a mapping application that helps you navigate in remote areas. While most GPS navigation apps offer the standard navigation feature “voice directions”, Spot does not come with such a feature as it has been created more for the purpose of “field navigation”. One could also say: “Off Road”. While this is already quite cool; Spot supports US nation-wide street level maps as well as worldwide satellite and topographic maps. Such maps are downloaded to your device on demand – meaning: in real time – according to your GPS position, your surrounding and the zoom level you have set up.

Attention! This gets a bit technical: The map format of those downloaded maps is called WMS. Spot is the only OGC WMS compliant mapping application for BlackBerry we know of so far. This means you can basically integrate any kind of WMS map server into the application.

There is a free demo of the app available on their site. Check it out if you want to.

Website: Spot for BlackBerry (all devices)

MobileTracker for BlackBerry is a GPS tracking application. It actually loggs your current movement on the earth to a file on your sd card.

You can decide whether you want a KMZ or a GPX file format. It is also configurable which time span you want in between each point recording as well as some KMZ specific settings which have effect to the tracklog visualization on Google Earth. Besides just tracking the movement MobileTracker also calculates statistics like avarage speed, distance and time travelled and so on. This makes it an interesting tool if you want to do some jogging or mountainbiking and record / archive what you have done. You can then play back your route in Google Earth. Check out the video below for such a demo.

But this is not enough. It is also possible to add pictures to your tracklog which can be taken with your BlackBerry’s camera while you are recording your tracklog. You can see a screen shot of a tracklog with photo on the left. Unfortunately, there is no demo version of MobileTracker available but the app seems to work fine on my Pearl, Curve 8320 and Bold.

Website: MobileTracker for BlackBerry (all devices)

Check out the BlackBerry and GPS article for more information on all available GPS, mapping and tracking applications for BlackBerry Wireless Handhelds.