tangoGPS

I'm pleased to announce another release of tangoGPS, with nice new features and improvements:

• This version indroduces waypoints. You can click anywhere on the map and set the clicked point as your destination (=waypoint). The point will then be marked with a blue flag and the distance and bearing will be shown. Additionally the GPS marker gets a second hand pointing towards your target.
  
• The pop-up menu has been revamped to allow for more one-click operations. Now clicking on POIs, friends or photos will directly bring up the details dialog.
  
• POI and Photo dialogs have a "Go To" button which marks it as target and sets the waypoint marker. This comes in very handy for geocaching.
  
• New (and very cool!) map repositories have been added: openaerialmap.org for free satellite imagery and maps-for-free.com for great looking relief maps (up to zoom 12). It is just fun to surf around the world from the Grand Canyon to the Vesuvio in Italy and to the Himalaya.
  
  You can very easily add them in the Config Tab, just insert "openaerial" (without the quotes) and respectively "maps-for-free" in the repository URL. [Thanks to Pavel Machek for the openaerial URL tip!]
  
• TangoGPS now shows better behaviour with slow or interrupted internet connections. It keeps track of all tile downloads during a session. This prevents lock-ups on lost internet connection and equally prevents double downloads on slow connections like GPRS.
  
• Following an often request: the repository configuration is now robust against any mistakes - tangoGPS will now start in any case and let you correct any error.
  
• POIs can be edited now and you can choose to use your current GPS position as the coordinates for a POI. Actually the POIs are stored in an sqlite database which resides in ~/.tangogps. There is a firefox extension called SQLite Manager with which you can directly access the database. Don't forget to do a regular backup! Not to forget: you can copy the poi.db between different Computers/Laptops/Phones etc.
  
• Last not least this version introduces another often requested feature, the display of the number of tiles in the download queue.

1. Your Current Speed. The speed is only shown when more than "2" (but alway visible in the bottom status bar)
   Note: on the Neo Freerunner the GPS chip is very jittery and pretty much always shows a speed even when you don't move at all.
   
2. Autocenter: pressing this button will let the map automatically follow your GPS position. For your convenience this stops when you manually move the map with the mouse (or respectively with the stylus on a touchscreen).
   
3. Zoom level indicator, here zoom level 9. Each zoom level is twice the scale of the preceeding. Use the slider to quickly zoom several zoom levels in or out. On the desktop or eeePC you can use the mouse scroll wheel for zooming, too.
   
4. GPS position marker. The blue handle points in the direction of your heading, the brown handle points towards your destination (waypoint).
   
   
5. The yellow star indicates a POI (Point of Interest)  and the blue flags marks it as your current waypoint.
   
6. When you have a waypoint set, the upper value indicates the distance (here: 17.628NM) and the bottom value indicates the bearing (here258.9°). 
   
7. The Status Bar gives you constantly the most important information. From the left to the right:

• D7: this tells you the number of currently running parallel tile downloads
• 168: if you are downloading tiles for offline use, this value tells you the number of remaining tiles in the queue
• 5.0kn: your current speed. Can be indicated in mph, km/h or knots at your choice.
• 48°: your current heading
• a:105ft = altitude. You can set it to either feet or meters.
• t:0.173NM = tripmeter. Again, either imperial, metrical or nautical units. The tripmeter is very handy when on a bike or when walking, doing sports or just leisurely moving around...
• 8/8/1.0: satellites in view (here: eight), satellites used (here: eight), HDOP=horizontal dilusion of precision (here: 1.0). The lower the HDOP value, the better the position data. Everything below 3.0 should be usable for openstreetmap.org mapping purposes.

As always there are packages for desktop (Debian, Ubuntu, SUSE, Fedora, Mandriva etc.), eeePC and Openmoko (Freerunner & Neo 1973) , making it easy for you to install, test and run it. Thank you for all your user feedback - this greatly helps to improve tangoGPS.

Have fun & Enjoy! And don't forget to spread the word about tangoGPS, write in your blogs or discuss in your favourite forum or mailing list...