There are some really cool gps applications and tools in Fedora repositories, but where are they located in Gnome menu once you install them?
 
I found some in Education (Viking), in Graphics (xgpx, xgps speed) and in Internet menu (Gpsdrive, gpsman, TangoGPS, VIking).
 
Surely GPS apps could be better grouped? Maybe they should even have their own menu? What are your thoughts on this?
 

 
i-gotU GT200 GPS is the greatest pocket GPS gadget you can find, if you are a geek then this is one gadget you have to get.
 
Why is it so great? It is a really cheap GPS device (around 55$ or 45€), it has a great SiRF III chipset and it works as a standalone GPS logging device because it has on-board memory! Did I mention it is really cheap? ;)
 
i-gotU GT200 software that comes with it support only Windows XP, there is no support for Linux, OSX or Windows 7.
 
The good news is that there is a project called igotu2gpx that adds Linux and OSX support for this great device!
 
To get this utility running on Fedora here are step by step instructions on how to do it:

You can use GUI tool by running igotugui command or cli version by using igotu2gpx command.
 
To download gps tracks from your i-gotU GT200 GPS use this command:
igotu2gpx dump --gpx > track.gpx
And to clear GPS memory just use this command:
igotu2gpx --action clear
 
You can use igotU GT200 via USB cable but first you need to initialize it:
su -
modprobe navman
echo -n "0x0df7 0x0900" > /sys/bus/usb-serial/drivers/navman/new_id

 
Now you can start gpsd and all aplications should see GPS dongle:
gpsd -b -N -D2 /dev/ttyUSB0
 
If you want to use igotU GT200 via bluetooth you can use this Bluetooth GPS Fedora howto guide to set it up.
 

 
Please check out this great blog post from Romanian mappers.
 
Ever since I saw great ItoWorld animation Year of Edits I wanted to make my own version. This look like it is possible, as mapguy has clearly demonstrated.
UPDATE: Ciprian aka Mapguy has made tutorial explaining how to make OSM progress animation.
 
So in order to make this work they made git repository for planet file and that is how it is possible to get a history for some town or place, because git repository keeps all changes ever made.
 
So in order to make your own animations you need to have your own planet.osm git repository. That is the first big hurdle :(
 
I hope that OpenStreetMap project creates an official public git repository so that anybody can get “history” for his town/place.
 
Read rest of story…

 
If you have bluetooth GPS dongle that you have laying around, or can borrow one from somebody, and like driving a bike or a car around then this is the guide for you.
 

You need to have bluetooth wireless chip already installed on your laptop. If you have a laptop or a desktop without bluetooth you can buy and use USB bluetooth dongle.
 

You can check if you have a bluetooth and that it is working correctly using this command:
hcitool dev

Then let’s make sure you have bluetooth service running:
service bluetooth status
 

if it is not running just start it with:
service bluetooth start
 

Turn on your bluetooth GPS dongle and find its bluetooth mac address with this command:
hcitool scan
Scanning ...
00:1E:EE:00:11:22 LG KU990
00:02:78:99:FF:00 SJ GPS
00:12:EE:55:00:FF Device01
 

If you find more than one bluetooth device you should know the name of your GPS dongle. My GPS dongle has a “GPS” in its name so it is easy to catch its mac address: 00:02:78:99:FF:00 (SJ GPS)
 

You need to install gpsd and setup bluetooth config files, so let’s first install gpsd:
su -
yum install gpsd gpsd-clients -y
 

Then you need to edit bluetooth config file so that gpsd connects automatically to GPS bluetooth dongle.

gedit / etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf
 

and add these lines:
 

rfcomm0 {
# Automatically bind the device at startup
bind yes;

# Description of the connection
comment "GPS Bluetooth dongle";
}
 

After reboot check if you have /dev/rfcomm0 device with:
ls -al /dev/rfcomm0
 

If after reboot (or you don’t wan’t to reboot) you still don’t have /dev/rfcomm0 then just issue this command:
rfcomm bind rfcomm0
 

Now start gpsd daemon:
gpsd /dev/rfcomm0
 

Now you can start having fun! :)
 

Install gps applications like tangogps, gpsdrive and gpsbabel.
yum install -y tangogps gpsdrive gpsbabel
 

Now just start tangogps and gpsdrive and enjoy…