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" Speech-recognition Reaching for a touchscreen while exiting the freeway can lead to fender benders. The Garmin Nuvi 880 features speech recognition which purports to allow you to keep your eyes on the road--instead of touching the screen, simply speak the command. As cool as this sounds, the tech still could use a lot of improvement. During our Strip-long, in-car demo, the speech recognition was, at-times, frustratingly unresponsive, forcing us to reach for the screen in frustration. Unfortunately, it fails to live up to its promise of completely hands-free operation for a simple reason: Rather than allowing you to simply say, &amp;quot;Go to 34 Maple Street,&amp;quot; it only lets you vocalize orders that are currently on the screen. For example, if you are browsing through restaurants in the points of interest database, instead of saying &amp;quot;Show me Cajun restaurants,&amp;quot; you have to scroll throw each page until &amp;quot;Cajun&amp;quot; pops up on the screen. Only then can you command it to bring you there. So while the idea is good, GPS speech recognition still has a long way to go before it completely keeps our hands on the wheel.    Avoid Red Light Cameras These days, would-be outlaws have more than just police radars to look for--cities streets are increasingly covered with red light cameras.  The Cobra Nav One 5000 allows you to out-gun Big Brother, featuring a nationwide (and Canadian) database of red light cameras. When you get within striking distance of the lens, it gives you a warning, allowing you plenty of time to slow down. This database is also going to be built into Cobra&amp;#039;s new high-end radar detectors. The 5000 hits now, and retails for $410.    Google On the Road Add Magellan to the list of companies lining up to partner with Google. Its new Maestro Elite 5350+GPRS nav unit uses the same type of wireless connection that powers GSM cell phones to keep a constantly-updated Google-supplied database of information about where you are headed. The idea is that it will be an infinite point of interest database that will never find itself outdated (there&amp;#039;s nothing worse than having your GPS direct you to a Shakey&amp;#039;s which is now a bank.) We would have a full hands-on with the new Maestro--if Magellan hadn&amp;#039;t lost their only demo unit in the UPS the night were going to play with it. The 5350 should come out in March for $1299.    Solve a Mystery We&amp;#039;re big fans of geocaching--the Web-based game that has GPS-toting hikers hide trinkets in the wilderness for other pioneers to find, based on the coordinates. Well the guys behind the fun have just produced a sequel of sorts, called &amp;quot;Whereigo.&amp;quot; In this iteration, users can make up Web-posted adventures, where GPS-owners can follow the plot, uncover the clues, and eventually find the hidden treasure. The idea is to mix up the imagination with real-world terrain. For now, you can only find the game on the just-announced Garmin Colorado line of handheld GPS units. Although we tried out the Colorados, and liked them, plenty, we haven&amp;#039;t had a chance to play the game yet, so we&amp;#039;re not sure exactly how it will work, but we&amp;#039;re assuming it will be like a real-life Choose Your Own Adventure, which sounds good enough for us. Just wait till the guys behind those marketing-driven &amp;quot;Alternate Reality&amp;quot; games get their hands on this.    Tunnel-proof Navigation Tunnels serve as impenetrable shields for GPS antennas. Fortunately, most new navigation units keep track of where you are going, even when you lose reception. However, because they work by measuring how far you have traveled--without any regard for whether that travel was vertical or horizontal across the road, they aren&amp;#039;t terribly accurate. Alright, we know most tunnels don&amp;#039;t run up mountains (they run through them), so this isn&amp;#039;t a huge deal, even so the new Sony Nav-U features a series of sensors that accurately detect how far you have traveled in any direction, so you never come out of a GPS dead spot lost.  "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a5409/4243529/>