Rounding out the top five scoring units were the Garmin Nuvi 760 ($600), Garmin Nuvi 660 ($500), TomTom Go 920T, ($650), Garmin Nuvi 350 ($350), and Magellan Maestro 4250 ($400).

- Kansas City InfoZine

I ask that question based on a discussion of POIFriend.com, a site that let's anyone share points of interest with others for use in websites and GPS units. There are social aspects - visitors can comment, join groups, create avatars, and send updates to those who originate POI lists. Is that enough to make it a social networking site?

Also noteworthy: the site's business model: paid listings, but no ads.

- Digital Journal

The project is called 230 Miles of Love (that's the length of the UK's M6 highway). You can download, for free, "satcoms" short skits, that play (manually or automatically, depending on your satnav device). Some stories, reports the Guardian blog are more location connected than others. Donations for charity are accepted. I'm not sure how compelling this is, but clearly folks are looking for new ways to link "new media."

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) and the Tampa Bay Estuary Program’s Manatee Awareness Coalition (MAC) want to save manatees. But for years, no mapping company's would put the manatee and homeland security zones in Tampa Bay on the navigation maps. But now Garmin is. The information is on all new chart plotters and updated SD cards.

Kipp Frohlich, leader of the FWC’s Imperiled Species Management Section, said “This marks a breakthrough that can save a lot of manatees. We tried unsuccessfully for years to get any mapping company to put the zones in their map covers. Garmin stepped up to the plate and did it.”

This is a great story and I do appreciate that Garmin stepped up, but if we all really want to save manatees, shouldn't this data be freely available to install on any unit? Perhaps that's naive and it's not how the boating navigation GPSs/charting tools work, but I thought I'd ask.

- TCPalm

There's been inklings of this idea in the past and it sounds valuable. Instead of using a map to tease out your exact location, take a picture of a landmark, have a database with many such photos find a match, and viola, you are found! Nokia is working on this sort of technology and it's already been tested by students at Stanford and U. Washington.

The latest dataset to appear on satnav? High car crime areas. Basically, it's a warning about where NOT to park your car. The feature is currently available from Sanyo one of its Gorilla branded devices. Alas, so far data is only available for Osaka. Interestingly, there almost no car crime in Japan, but elsewhere...

- Tech Radar