Yearly Archive: 2005

Outdoor Navigator becomes Activemap, and free 2

Outdoor Navigator becomes Activemap, and free

NOAA’s free chart policy strikes again! Maptech will no longer sell  Outdoor Navigator, the nifty PDA (both PocketPC and Palm) and Smartphone charting program sort of shown above. The developer, Jeffrey Siegel, has decided to go independent, largely because he...

Marine electronics, the $ number 0

Marine electronics, the $ number

I’m curious; how big is the worldwide recreational marine electronics market? As best I can tell no trade organization is trying to keep track. In the U.S., NMMA publishes interesting statistics, but doesn’t break out electronics. Some manufacturers...

Uniden ES VHF series, late but great 4

Uniden ES VHF series, late but great

Uniden announced the ES VHF series over a year ago, but the UM525 and UM625c above (bigger here) didn’t materialize until fairly recently, and the UM825 is still missing. It bothers me to have written about gear that wasn’t...

More METs, LED’s everywhere 0

More METs, LED’s everywhere

Well, I could not help but notice that everybody seems to have a secret desire to produce LED lighting products. There must have been at least a dozen or more companies with LED products....

Mind the leap second, an AIS ‘gotcha’ 0

Mind the leap second, an AIS ‘gotcha’

Wasn’t I just noodling about celestial mechanics? Well it turns out that for the first time since 1998, the time authorities need to insert a second into the world clock “to make up for...

SkyScout, a gizmo for celestial navigators? 4

SkyScout, a gizmo for celestial navigators?

The 2006 CES (consumer electronics) Innovations Honorees are up, and among them is this darned interesting “personal planetarium”. Apparently you can point the SkyScout at any of 6,000 celestial objects, press a button and it...

The Man Remote, a Friday giggle 7

The Man Remote, a Friday giggle

I really am intending to do some research on universal remotes, the bane of many a yacht (and home). But meanwhile some handy fellow dreamed up this model. I wonder how many other guys...

Class B AIS transponder for $500, maybe 11

Class B AIS transponder for $500, maybe

So goes the headline in the Nov. issue of Digital Ship (click on link in “Navigation” section, and thanks, Raye), but there’s something odd about this otherwise very intriguing proposition. For one thing, SRT’s business development...