Where to Buy Photon Torpedos in Copenhagen

Okay, so now I can run a webserver on my mobile phone (I can’t tell you how unbelievably cool this is, and not only for the gadget geek reasons — it’s a Copernican moment when our webservers start to walk around, something that forces us to rethink who’s “producer” and who’s “consumer”).

Anyway, what’s the first thing a walking webserver needs but to know where it is. This handy software let’s my Nokia N70 talk to a wireless GPS receiver; all I need to make it work is, well, a wireless GPS receiver. Nokia has a couple of models available, and I figured being in a Big City like Copenhagen, rife with mobile shops, I could just pop over ‘round the corner to pick one up.

Or not.

You’d think I was looking to install photon torpedos in my Chevy Nova from the look on the faces of the mobile, electronics and computer shops I visited along Copenhagen’s “silicon allé” today. Apparently the notion of connecting a GPS receiver to a mobile phone hasn’t entered the public consciousness yet, and so while one or two people I talked to had heard of such a thing, and thought maybe they could order one, nobody had one in stock, and nobody knew else who could sell me one.

I suppose this is what eBay is for.

Comments

Jevon's picture
Jevon on June 7, 2006 - 18:38 Permalink

A lot of new phones indicate that they have a “GPS Receiver” on board. If this a real GPS decoder, or some sort of 911-network-triangulation helper thing?

ChrisH's picture
ChrisH on June 13, 2006 - 18:53 Permalink

Hmmm, odd that no-one had a Bluetooth GPS. They’re pretty popular for car navigation these days. I tend to recommend the Holux GPSlim 236 — it uses the SiRFStar III chipset. It’s got the best proven results with staying locked to satellites, especially in cities. Solves some of the foibles of GPS.

http://www.nav4all.com is selling them for 70 euro, which is very cheap.

As for GPS in phones, yes, a lot of CDMA products in the US do have AGPS included — but not necessarily any programmatic access to the information. GSM GPS phones are currently very rare.

ChrisH's picture
ChrisH on June 13, 2006 - 20:02 Permalink

Oh, I see you did :)