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The Korean company, Homecast, recently came out with a device that is both a Portable Media Player as well as a Portable Navigation Device. The GPS portion of this device is housed in the car cradle, and when you take it out of the car cradle, the device becomes the PMP.

The physical device itself comes with a 4.3-inch TFT LCD screen, boasts a T-DMB receiver, plays a variety of formats including AVI, MPG, ASF, WMV, OGM, DAT, MKV, DivX 3.11/4/5, MP4, WMV 7/8/9, H.264, MPEG 1/2/2.5 Layer 3, WMA, OGG Vorbis, and AC3. As you can see it comes with a plethora of formats, guaranteeing you can find a way to get your videos on it.

Now, once it goes into the cradle, it delivers GPS maps from Mappy’s GPS software. It comes in two different models, the 8GB or 16GB. It it set to cost 389,000 KRW ($378) and 419,000 KRW ($406), respectively.

Via [NaviGadget]

The popular Cowon portable media player, the N3, recently underwent a major appearance change. Previously the N3 had a shiny aluminum casing, however it now has a wooden casing - Burl Walnut to be exact. Otherwise, it still comes with the same features as before, and it still remains a Portable Navigation Device.

The N3 runs on a sweet Alchemy AU1250 600Mhz CPU, comes with a nice, big 7-inch touchscreen, boasting 16.7 million colors, audio playback, video playback, and image viewing. Other features include an electronic dictionary, Picture-In-Picture, and GPS, hence the PND. No word on whether the pricing is going to be higher, but it makes sense that it would be higher due to the wooden casing, and it is only going to be available in the Korean market.

Via [Akihabara News]

The Boston Globe picked a fight with TomTom.  Really, picking on TomTom isn’t fair, most GPS units figure out street numbers the same way.  Most units take a street with say 100 numbers and spread them out evenly.  It gets you pretty close most or some of the time.

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Korea seems to be the launching pad for innovation when it comes to new technology and the world of portable navigational devices (PND’s) is currently madly spinning. Computer Telephone Technology (CTT-Net) is now ready to launch its two newest PND’s to a waiting world.

The CSN-7040 is the very first portable navigation device to incorporate Immersion’s TouchSense system, which enables tactile feedback on touch-screens. The CIN-7000 is a built-in car navigation system that also uses the TouchSense technology and improves general safety by reducing the “glance-time” while driving. Both navigation units have a 7-inch touch screen and a DMB receiver for satellite downloads.

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