The Garmin’s Course Creator

With today’s Garmin Connect update, navigation on bike lanes, running and hiking trails, and walking paths just got a whole lot easier. Gone are the days when you’d have to stop during your best trail run, epic hike or cycling adventure to take out your paper trail map and double check that you are headed down the right path. Now you
can use our Course

 

Creator – and with a few simple mouse clicks you can draw your route using Google maps, save it and send it directly to your compatible

Garmin device. With Google maps, you can even show your local bike lanes in Kona, HI, jogging paths through Central Park, and even hiking trails in Whistler, BC to name a few great destinations!

Once your course is saved, you can allow it to be stored publicly for users around theworld to view and they can send to their devices so they can experience your favorite route as well. This feature, we call Explore, is great when travelling to a new city, away on business or for those who want to break their same old routine and try a new route.

 

You’ll also notice an improved ability to zoom on our number of detailed graphs when analyzing your most recent adventure.

 

Garmin Opie’s Treasure Chest Sweepstakes


True to his nature, Opie has been stashing away a whole lot of geocaching goodies for the coming winter. It came as no surprise, really, until we saw just how much stuff he had piled up. But after some conversations and coercion, he’s agreed to share his stockpile with his fellow cache creators at OpenCaching.com – but he wants to make it interesting. So throughout October we’ll be giving away his products as prizes to cache creators, and the prizes get bigger and better as more caches get created.

For starters, for every 100 caches created, we’ll give away an OpenCaching.com starter kit to a lucky participant until we reach 1,000 new caches. Once we top 1,000 new caches, we’ll give away a Dakota 20 to one randomly selected cache creator. Crossing the 2,000 cache mark will trigger an Oregon 450t giveaway. And as soon as we hit 3,000 new caches logged at OpenCaching.com, we’ll be giving away a GPSMAP 62stc – and we’ll give one of those away for every thousand caches created thereafter until the end of the month.

Every cache created qualifies as an entry, and to make things even easier, we provide a page to easily import caches you may have listed on other sites to help spread the word about your creations. And in the end, everyone comes out ahead because they’ll have thousands of new caches to find and log. While this specific sweepstakes is open to U.S. and Canadian residents, our offices around the world have been brainstorming – and announcing – exciting promotions for their respective countries as well.

Garmine stories

Chicago 2007 was my first marathon, and my first with a Forerunner so that, at a glance, I would know exactly how I was doing throughout the race. Tomorrow will be my first with a GTU tracking unit so that, at a glance, my friends and family will know exactly how I’m doing throughout the race. And while I haven’t trained as much as I’d planned heading into New York next month, it’s not that I’m wearing GTU out of fear that something bad will happen (though that’s a logical use as well). Rather, I want people who can’t attend the marathon to be able to enjoy the experience along with me simply by glancing down at their smartphone or laptop. So I’m drawing geofences – virtual boundaries – around key milestones and mile markers so that as I pass through, text and email alerts will be sent to my friends who requested them. For real-time updates, they can log into my my.Garmin account and check the location at any time. It’s not quite the same as hearing them cheer me on along the streets, but I know they’ll be supporting me from afar – even if it is just a glorified training run as a final preparation for New York.

And that’s the beauty – and versatility – of GTU 10. You can use it to track your young children before and after school. You can use it to track your pets in case they hop the fence and leave the yard. You can use it to track your teen driver for a little more peace of mind. You can even use it to track your boat, bike or sportscar to make sure they’re not on the move when they’re not supposed to be. So with all of those uses – and ones that we haven’t even thought of – we’re wondering: How do you GTU? Obviously it has to be legal, so you have to have ownership, guardianship or the consent of whatever or whomever you’re tracking. With that in mind, head over to Facebook or Twitter and tell us how GTU would make your life easier, safer and more secure.