Monthly Archive: April 2005

LED lantern in a bottle 2

LED lantern in a bottle

Tip of the hat to Scuttlebutt for today’s kind News Brief about Panbo. It’s been crazy here, it’s Friday, and I’m going to keep it quite light. So meet LightCap, a 32 oz water jug with a solar...

Cool blue cordless 0

Cool blue cordless

Alrighty, then, it’s Uniden Day. While getting links for the earlier entry, I spotted this new Bluetooth cordless phone system that just might be terrific for bigger yachts. The key feature is connectivity between...

Angry about NMEA 2000 44

Angry about NMEA 2000

Hot words about NMEA 2000 were tossed into a recent rec.boats.electronics thread: “Oh, boy!  Another proprietary, improperly documented, non-standard data protocol designed to keep the marine electronics assholes swimming in money for another decade…” Yike! I believe...

Nitty gritty comms at SetSail.com 0

Nitty gritty comms at SetSail.com

SSB SailMail, Sat C, GSM phones using GPRS data, Iridium, marina WiFi, Internet Cafes (“Curses to French keyboards!”), online banking, malicious spyware  — damn, some long range cruisers are becoming IT professionals. Yesterday, SetSail.com put up a series of...

Satellite Internet speed doubles 1

Satellite Internet speed doubles

Yesterday KVH announced that ISDN (by-the-minute data) service for its big Fleet 77 Inmarsat communications systems is going from 64 to 128 kilobits per second. And hence “with KVH’s exclusive Velocity™ Acceleration software, broadband data...

Charting Points of Interest 0

Charting Points of Interest

Another important feature of the new Max and Platinum chart card formats I wrote about earlier today is their vastly expanded POI (Points of Interest) databases. Click on an icon and you can find out a marina’s phone...

Sexy C-Map Max charts? 0

Sexy C-Map Max charts?

Why do C-Map’s full page ads for its new Max chart format feature a woman wearing a cartographic body suit? Even the model looks like she thinks it a goofy idea! Especially since Max has...

Doing boat WiFi right 3

Doing boat WiFi right

I’ve learned a lot about how boaters are using WiFi along the our coasts, and it’s darn exciting. Savvy folks are using the Internet to the max for fun, work, and even cruise planning (weather, slip...