Now I am also a seller in Ebay

Last night,  I reached another milestone where it was the first time I put one of my gadget for sale in Ebay. For all the while I am the loyal, avid buyer in Ebay. I bought a lot things ranging from cosmetic to  my extensive gadget collection as you’ve learnt from my previous postings.

Well, ebay is a fantastic place to buy and sell.  From last night exercise of putting up my thing for sale on ebay, I realized that the listing cost charged by ebay is not that expensive (unless if you are venturing into opening store there).  The overall cost for my listing last night for 7 days is merely USD1.70.

I put up my not so old Bluetooth GPS receiver which I am no longer use since my Samsung Omnia already equipped with GPS receiver.

I am no so sure whether the price that I offered is reasonable or not, but at least I now have the experience to continue putting up other stuff for sale in ebay.

By the way, you might want to see my inaugural as a seller in ebay form this link and if you

are interested, please bid

http://cgi.ebay.com.my/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&item=110328679681

Malfreemaps.com, the real FREE Malaysian maps for Garmin

I just learnt that, several senior mappers (antyong, sunn, dynamix) have parted away from Malsingmaps.com and setting up www.malfreemaps.com

Few reasons were discovered from my investigation using google for the split. You may read my discoveries from the URLs below:

http://9w2fzr.blogspot.com/2008/09/malsingmaps-splitted.html

http://www.shc-forum.com/viewtopic.php?t=152468&sid=40466360a039328f313696ccebb434b5

What ever it is, now with malfreemaps, you can really get a free Malaysian maps for your Garmin GPS devices. Unlike malsingmaps, no need for you to contribute to be entitled for the latest map in malfreemaps. That is the principal different between the malfreemaps and malsingmaps. In malsingmaps, you have to contribute at least two Point-Of-Interest (POIs), new tracks or corrections of in the existing maps for you to be entitled for the next coming map release.

Nevertheless, for malfreemaps, I still hope users can contribute so that the maps would be further updated. More mappers lead to much detailed maps.

It must be noted  that malfreemaps is still not yet as details as the malsingmaps since those mappers in malfreemaps try to build the maps almost from zero.

Garmin release Mobile XT version 5!

I am a regular user of Garmin Mobile XT which is a GPS application meant for non-Garmin GPS hardware e.g. for Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Symbian and Palm.

Garmin just release the new version for Mobile XT (version 5). The release, which is available here in the Garmin support site, offers the following benefits over version 4…

• Update the look and feel of the Garmin Mobile XT application.
• Add Google Local Search.
• Add Panaramio photos-get to see pictures geotagged to your nearest location.
• Add Flight Status- you can check all flight schedule (departure and arrival) for your nearest airport. In fact virtually all airports in the world!
• Add Speed Limit display to the View Map.
• Add ability to install and display custom vehicle icons.
• Modify ‘Peerpoints’ feature name to ‘Location Message’.
• Where I am function-give you easier access  to know your coordinates, the nearest junction of main roads, nearest hospital, police station and petrol stations.

…as well as a bunch of significant fixes / tweaks.

As for me, Mobile XT’s strengths have always been it’s excellent routing engine, great POI database and supplementary information and most of all it’s competitive price! In version 4 I felt this was at the expense of a UI that looked somewhat dated, but with version 5 adopting a Nuvi-like look and feel, hopefully this will be overcome!

Here are some screen shots:

Mobile XT home screen

See the new goolge local search

Definitely much nicer than the old one!

Weather forecast

Mapsource 6.14.01 beta can not browse Malsingmaps GM-MySin

Last night, I struggled a lot to view Malsingmaps GM-MySin v2.28 map on my latest Mapsource installation using 6.14.01 beta. I found out that after installing the malsingmaps, the Mapsource could not ran at all giving error message that there is something wrong with the GM-MySin v2.28 installation.

Tonight, after some search in malsingmaps forum, i discover the bug! It is some error in the registry that we need to change.

You need to change the following registry key:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Garmin\Mapsource\Families\GM-MySin\3c

to become

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Garmin\Mapsource\Families\GM-MySin\60

The original values are hexadecimals (3c). Replace them with their decimal equilvalent (60).

This 60 is only for Peninsular maps, for Borneo use 59.

Why 60, This is the reason given by one of the forumer:

New beta releases from Garmin do not recognise the Product Code Malsingmaps is using. If future stable releases follow the same rule, we just need to change the Product Code.

Subkey (looks like subfolder) = PID, you can gmaptool or FIDfinder.exe or others software to see the PID value for your *.img file in decimal, each img file has FID, PID, RID, RgnID, VenID

or use Hex2Dec(“3B”) = 59 — function in in Excell (should enable Analysis Toolpack add-in in order to enable Hex2Dec function)

In Excell spreadsheet — Click -> Tools -> Add-ins -> check Analysis Toolpack -> OK

example for GM-MySin change from Hex 3C –> Dec 60

Or, you can just use the calculator from Windows. Choose “View” and “Scientific”.
Click on the radio button “Hex”, type the hex value, eg. “3C” and then click on the radio button “Dec”. You will get the decimal value of “60″ as in the picture.

How to legally install Mapsource

Now, there are a lot of free, open source maps produced for different parts of the world by GPS enthuthiasts. The most popular mapping tool usually used by such community is from Garmin called Mapsource. So far I believe only Garmin has a good open source tool for mapping and autorouting.

Example of such community is in Malaysia, you have www.malsingmaps.com, NZ Open GPS Project for New Zealand. These maps are updated frequently and to certain extend is much more accurate and favorable compared to official Garmin maps.

One thing I realized is, most of these free maps assume that you have Mapsource software to view, download and upload the maps between your PC and your GPS devices (e.g. Nuvi, Mobile XT, etrex, etc).

Here I would like to share how to get the Mapsource free of charge legally without having to go to torrents. Follow the following steps:

1. Please install the Garmin Training Center. Get the installer from HERE. This will actually give you the crucially needed Garmin folder in your C:/ drive.

2. Next, install the latest Mapsource update which you could get HERE.

3. The previous two steps will install Mapsource in your PC with a world base map without any specific mapsets for the interested region.

4.You may then download any free maps from the above portal for free maps.

You now can download your map into your GPS devices!