GPS Pilot SwissGeo Rando launch

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Grenoble, Epalingues,  24 November 2004. the two   European companies GPS Pilot and   SwissGeo announce SwissGeo Rando, the European PDA outdoor guide solution for treks lover.

The French GPS Pilot company and the Swiss SwissGeo, company are proud to introduce SwissGeo Rando : the complete travel assistant for wilderness trips around the Alps.  

Excellent for hiking, mountain-biking, snow-mobiling, even off-road driving, SwissGeo Rando assists travelers from trips planning to en-route navigation, with the capacity to collect large ranges of geographical information for later use for analysis and sharing.

“ By coupling SwissGeo on-line cartography portal services and our PDA navigation software”, explained Bertrand Simon GPS Pilot CEO, “we have taken advantage of   both home and mobile computers world :   trip preparation is done on desktop machines beneficing of power, memory, high definition and size screen. And on the fields, we offer accuracy, safety and ease-of-use of the   GPS navigation on PDA devices. Moreover, during hiking, treks planning or modification can be done on the PDA itself, the same manner as on desktop machine.”

For journeys preparation, SwissGeo web portal offer a wild selection of Swiss topographical maps, as well as a set of treks profiles sorted by trekkers category (family, senior, professional), with distance, walking time, or points of interest related to hikes. On the PDA, SwissGeo Rando allows to upload maps and pre-defined treks from SwissGeo web site using Wifi or GPRS connections.

En-route, Rando acts like an interactive guide : via a GPS connection, trekker can observe his position on map and on the trek itinerary, his heading, or his speed. he can also consult quickly where is the next cabin, turn, point of interests, etc.   or even take a picture (with the PDA) and automatically record its position on the map.

To be fully complete, Rando allows to create new hikes by directly pointing location on maps or by recording path en-route with the GPS. Back home, these data can be analyzed to add specific details, and be published on SwissGeo web site to be shared with other treks lovers.

SwissGeo Rando benefits are unique:

• More freedom: No more need for cluttered and quickly damaged paper maps, a 256 MB SD Card allows to store more than 30 paper maps that were very.
• More ease:   most GPS devices do not visualize maps (only trek definitions are displayed) and treks planning is a fastidious work (converting treks points into GPS location is difficult)
• More accuracy: with the GPS data and display of maps on PDA, localization has never been so precise.
• More pleasure:   any treks can be personalized upon your tastes by adding supplementary information such as cabin location, site to be seiing.
• More sharing: because of the trekkers sportive and team spirit,   treks information collected during hikes are shared between hikers on sites such as SwissGeo site or   http://myswitzerland.com/ the official Swiss Tourism board web which propose more than 400 ready-to-use trek definitions available on-line and soon on Sdcard

Requirements:

The application SwissGeo Rando is at the conjunction of 3 high technologies: Mobile Information, Global Positioning System and Mapping technologies. It needs a PDA/Smartphone devices connected to GPS hardware via cable, IR or Blue Tooth connection. The access to on-line European cartography is adapted for wireless access (blue tooth, IR, modem), or can be used with PC-PDA Internet gateway.

Palm OS 3.5 minimum: Sony Clie series; Palm Tungsten, HandSpring Treo,…

NMEA GPS Receivers: Garmin Ique, Blue tooth GPS (Emtac BT), Compact Flash GPS(Pretec CF, Transplant Computing CF, Crux II CF,...), Memory Stick GPS, clip-on GPS (NavMan, Rand McNally, Companion) and External GPS units (DeLorme Earthmate, Garmin, Magellan, Eagles models, ...)

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