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Newlaunches: Americans may enjoy the services of XM and Sirius Radio, but the satellite radio industry in Europe is quite at a nascent stage. Working on the similar premise of the dish antenna for TV, ESA and their nine partners have labored for three long years and are coming out with a satellite car radio that will change the face of the radio industry in Europe for good. The prototype of this radio will be demonstrated at the Noordwijk Space Expo on Thursday 25 January.

Saying goodbye to signal loss in tunnels, cracking voices and static noise, this multimedia car radio is just the beginning of the good times to come. Keeping the sleek looks of the car in mind, it will have no large dish antenna on the roof, but a specially designed mobile antenna, flattened so that it can be built almost invisibly into the bodywork. Instead of new satellites and a network of ground-based transmitters the ESA system uses only existing communication satellites.

Due to the advanced technology used (cache memory), received signals can be stored and can be played back later. So in case you need to make that restroom stop in the middle of your fav song you could pause the song, you can even select a part of the broadcast to listen to.

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Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Sergey Ivanov today said that India is the only country with which Russia wants to develop all aspects of the global satellite navigation system GLONASS.

“At present India is the only country with which we want to develop all aspects of GLONASS. This demonstrates the general nature of our relations and our willingness to develop cooperation with India in such sensitive areas,” he said in Bangalore on Tuesday when visiting a satellite production centre.

“The Ministry of Defence has now removed all limitations on the precision of receiving information from GLONASS,” he added.

Ivanov said that the management of Roskosmos would sign for the Russian side, although the GLONASS system was and will remain a duel-use system.

He added that Moscow is prepared to cooperate with India in developing GLONASS, saying that it already counts military-technical cooperation.

Source: Interfax News Agency

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ZDNet: Europe’s upcoming satellite constellation, Galileo, is becoming a barrier to the integration of satellite navigation into European handsets, a mobile operator claimed last week.

According to O2, operators and manufacturers remain uncertain over the deployment schedule for Galileo and the likely quality of its signal.

Although the mobile industry wants to put some form of global navigation satellite system (GNSS) functionality into phones, some companies within it are hesitant about which system to use.

The only GNSS currently in action is GPS, the American system designed and run by the US military. Already familiar to many people as the technology behind vehicle satellite navigation and fleet tracking, a server-assisted version called assisted GPS or A-GPS — which promises quicker location-finding — is set to be used in handsets around the world.

However, Galileo — which should be fully operational by the end of 2008 — will supposedly provide greater accuracy, leaving some in the industry wondering whether they should invest in compatibility with GPS, Galileo or both (a path that appears to have been taken by the UK-based chipset manufacturer CSR). This indecision, said O2, is slowing things down.

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Australian IT: British microchip designer CSR plans to make an all-in-one GPS and Bluetooth chip for mobile gadgets.

CSR chief executive John Scarisbrick told reporters the super-sensitive technology would be far more effective than traditional GPS and could be used indoors.

The chips would also drain less power and be cheaper for handset makers than having two separate chips in their devices.

The benefit comes from loading software for the two technologies onto a separate chip and making the one processor do all the work.

It is also likely to open up new a host of new uses for phones and mobile gadgets such as allowing worried parents to track children and giving emergency services a way of locating casualties.

Mr Scarisbrick said its combined GPS and Bluetooth chip would cost manufacturers an extra $US1 per chip as opposed to around $US5-$US10 for a standalone GPS chip.

He said mobile handset makers had already expressed interest.

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Blaupunkt and Kenwood are currently planning to form a partnership in the field of Portable Navigation Devices (PNDs).  

By bundling their key competences, the two companies aim to supply navigation devices that are easy to operate and include innovative, attractive features for different regional markets.

Starting in 2008, the devices co-developed by the two companies will be offered by each of the two partners individually on the rapidly growing market segment of portable navigation.

Blaupunkt and Kenwood both plan to use this cooperation to continue to expand their competence as leading providers of portable navigation systems.

Source: Business Wire

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TG Daily: TomTom said that it will be marketing a GPS navigation system to the automotive industry, which can be embedded into the dash, but also comes with the capability to be removed by users of the system.

According to the company, the new device, scheduled to be available this summer, can be coupled with a radio, infotainment head unit, or built directly into the dashboard.

The manufacturer said that the navigation device will provide full audio integration with other components of the car, playing CDs and MP3s in Hi-Fi stereo quality, and will be compatible with spoken instructions and phone calls via the car’s speakers.

Pricing of the system has not been announced.

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Gizmodo: LG shows off some GPS know-how with its new LAN-9600R. Besides the fact that the built-in disc reader supports CDs and DVDs filled with all sorts of multimedia (MP3, WMA, Divx, etc.), the unit’s 7-inch screen is motorized, meaning that it can retract into the dash at the push of a button.

It looks as if the LAN-9600R will launch in Europe first and will come bundled with maps of various European countries and is expected to hit the streets for around $2,000.

Whereas standalone portable GPS units might be a bit dubious nowadays, there will pretty much always be a market for these in-car, big-screened models, especially since you can load ‘em up with all your favorite media.

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EETimes: The European Commissioner in charge of transport, Jacques Barrot, has admitted that the Galileo satellite navigation project is behind schedule because negotiations with the eight private partners who will manage the system once completed have still not been completed.

Barrot said the year-end deadline to conclude the negotiations would again be missed. Original plans called for a deal to be concluded by late 2005.

The Commissioner also revealed that the start-up budget of €1.5 billion is still about €200 million short and that talks with national governments are continuing to finalize this budget.

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Auto Express: Under plans being considered by the UK Government, sat nav set-ups could soon be made to look virtually the same.New regulations could limit the amount of data that can be displayed, and dictate character and typeface size. Introducing a standardised system would make sat-nav less distracting for the driver.

Safety and motoring groups plus car firms are being consulted to find out if such regulation is necessary. Ministers are expected to make a decision by the end of January.

Alan Steven, chief scientist at the Transport Research Laboratory in Crowthorne, Berks, said: “Most items on a car, such as light bulbs, must conform to certain specific standards. However, there is no such regulation of sat-nav, and the Government wants to find out whether there should be.”

He added that measures may also be put in place to ensure the units can’t direct tall vehicles under low bridges or HGVs along weak roads.

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Brighthand: Garmin has discontinued its last two Windows Mobile-based devices, leaving it with just a single GPS-enabled handheld, the Palm OS-based iQue 3000.After gradually building up a fairly large portfolio of models since 2003, the company has been whittling away at its line-up of handhelds in the last few months.

Most recently, the iQue M3 and iQue M4 were added to Garmin’s list of discontinued devices, which means it no longer offers any Pocket PCs.

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French online routeplanner Mappy is about to launch its own navigation system. The Mappy iTi will be sold exclusively on Mappy.com, starting from Monday, and will cost about 349 euro (or 299 euros if you buy it before January 10th 2007).

The Mappy Iti supposedly has some added extras too, like MP3 and video playback (DivX, Xvid, MPG, MPEG1, MPEG4 SP, WMV7, 8 et 9, AVI, ASF).

(source: Clubic)

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NaviGadget: Another name to enter the sat nav market is Harman Kardon with a system called the Guide + Play.

It will include a media player that is smart enough to sort your music and other media on artist name, genre, album, etc. Guide + Play will come with a 4-inch screen and you’ll be able to upgrade its memory to 4 GB using the SD slot.

The internal rechargeable battery should last you up to 5 hours on a single charge.

Although we’re not sure on an exact release date for Europe, the retail price will be around €400.

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