Maptech Outdoor Navigator

Heck, let’s make this Jeffrey Siegel day at Panbo. You see what I didn’t mention below is that Siegel is also the developer of Maptech’s Outdoor Navigator, an excellent PDA (Palm and PPC) charting program that I wrote about back in early 2002 and which has recently evolved in very interesting ways. I thought it was a pretty good deal at $100 with a year access to all the U.S. charts or topos you wanted to download, but now ON costs a mere $20 and you can keep downloading maps as long as you own the PDA it’s registered to. ON also now works on “Smartphones” using Microsoft’s cell operating system. The phones from Audiovox, Motorola, and others do not have touch screens, so all ON’s controls have been neatly moved to the keypad. Jeff, who naturally is cruising with all versions of his creation, notes that the lack of a touchscreen is one reason why his smartphone has an extra long battery life. He also notes how useful ON is just as a chart reference tool, no messing with a GPS, especially as Maptech corrects the charts on their servers every month.  The whole ON story is here.