Updated: May 5th, 2009

NOTE: Please read the entire post. I have updated this blog entry several times to reflect changes in both the GPS and Chipset software since I originally posted this entry. If you have any questions or problems leave a comment and I will reply back to you. Thanks!

I thought I would take a moment to describe how to fix a problem that popped up with my GPSMap 60 this weekend in the event it happens to someone else who might be using this model. I have to tell you, GPS’s are great tools when you are traveling unfamiliar roads but it’s no fun at all when they stop working. I know you all have been lectured on the proper way to shut down your computers by we IT people and you might not really understand why or even believe that you can corrupt your system by shutting it down improperly but I am here to tell you, it can happen. In the process of trying to turn on my GPS’s back light, I shunted the system and corrupted the software on the chipset. I turned the unit on and in an attempt to turn on the back light while driving and paying more attention to the road than the unit, which is a good thing by the way, I turned off the unit while it was still in the process of booting up. Instant chipset corruption! You will know when this happens because your unit will be stuck perpetually at the screen seen in the second image of this post.

Believe me when I tell you, your GPS will not acquire a satellite no matter how long you leave it on, no matter how long you leave it off and then try turning it back on, removing the the batteries or swapping out the unit’s SD card. The chipset’s software had been corrupted and it will not work properly until you have reloaded the chipset software. The easiest way to tell if you have encountered this problem is to check the software version of your GPS. If the GPS SW version is 0.00, then you have indeed corrupted the chipset and will need to reload the software. The third image of this post will show you what version number I am referring to.

As I have said, in order to get your GPS unit functioning again you will need to reinstall the chipset software. There are two ways to do this. You can use the Web Updater program that you probably installed when you first bought the unit. You will find it under the Garmin menu from your Start menu. The second way would be to install the chipset software manually using the the “G” chipset installer. The second method is the one I used as I kept getting a “Transfer Error” when I tried to use the Web Updater software. You can download this software directly from Garmin, if you can find it. I think they want folks to use the Web Updater software as they aren’t real up front on where to download the actual installer packages. If you like you can download the software from this site here.

NOTE: Here is the latest version of the Chip Set Firmware, V.3.00. I am providing this as a secondary download as some have reported to me that the V.3.00 caused their units to shut off prematurely. Try this version and if you have any problems roll your GPS back to the V.2.90 software.

I have tested this software and my unit does continue to function normally so if you want the latest version of the software (GPSMAP 60CSx Ver. 3.90 as of Mar 30, 2009) for the GPSMap 60CSX you can download it here. If you prefer you can download it directly from Garmin.

Click the image to the left to download the GPSMAP 60CSx User Manual

Installing the software in fairly simple. Connect the GPSMap 60 to your computer using the mini-USB cable that came with your unit and then run the installer. Refer to your Owner’s Manual if you need further assistance. All that being said, I love my GPSMap 60 and this minor bump in the road has not changed my opinion of the unit. It’s been a great little unit and I fully expect it to remain so for years to come.

Note: The screens above are not the actual screens, just approximations I created in PS to give folks a visual. The actual screens will looks slightly different. I wrote this post to help others should they have this problem with their GPSMap 60′s as I didn’t find a lot of clear help on the web when I researched the problem. If you have more questions, please feel free to comment below.

As you can see from the blog posts below, I am test driving Twitterfone. Twitterfone is a service that lets you call a phone number and record a message that is then translated into a twitter post for you from that message. I am going to hold off any opinion I have of it until after the weekend when I have had a chance to put it through its paces. I will say I find the idea of it exciting as there are some instances where you just can’t text, as in when you should be driving. We’ll see how it works out.

On one of my missions to help someone out with a setting in some program they were using I stumbled across this handy little app. If only I had this back in my tech support days it would have saved me countless hours of phone support with a client. Jing allows you to create screen shots or videos to use when trying to explain how to use a piece of software or some element of their computer’s operating system. When using the screen shot feature it gives you several options to annotate the image to get your point across. A very useful feature for tech writing. In the past I have used Photoshop to create my images for tech papers but as everyone does not have access to Photoshop this application will do quite nicely. In the image below you can see some examples of the annotations provided by Jing.

When a simple pic won’t suffice you can create a video showing step by step instructions complete with audio. This is easily the best feature of Jing as nothings gets a person through a jam like video with audio prompts showing them exactly what they need to do in order to accomplish their task. A friend new to Mac computing and Adium (a multi-client IM application for Mac OS) asked me how to set a custom away message over email, I launched Jing and created this video in a matter of minutes…

Creating a custom away message in Adium

Much faster than typing out the steps in an email and left little chance of them not understanding how to do what they wanted with their application.

Jing sits off to the side of your screen and when you need it all you have to do is hover your mouse over it and you’re moments away from creating a screen shot or video you can share via chat, a web forum or email. Jing places a link to the media you created on your clip board, so all you have to do it paste it into your conversation. It’s a cross platform application so there are versions available for both Mac and PC users and at the current time Jing is free. That’s right, free.

So, if you want to check it out head on over to their web site and give it a try. The only thing you have to spend is your time.

FrostWire.com – Official Website – Free BitTorrent/Gnutella Client – No subscriptions, Just download and install

What is FrostWire?

FrostWire, a Gnutella Peer-to-Peer client, is a collaborative effort from many Open Source and freelance developers located from all around the world. In late 2005, concerned developers of LimeWire’s open source community announced the start of a new project fork “FrostWire” that would protect the developmental source code of the LimeWire client and any improvements to the Gnutella protocol design. The developers of FrostWire give high regard and respect to the GNU General Public License and consider it to be the ideal foundation of a creative and free enterprise market.

ComicRack – Welcome

ComicRack is the best eComic Reader and Manager for Windows computers with much more features than other comic readers like CDisplay.

It is an all in one solution to read your eComics and also manage your library. You can think of it as a kind of ITunes for eComics with lots of the same functionality.

As a reader ComicRack supports all the state of the art features you can expect: different display modes, full screen, information overlays, magnifier, color adjustments, automatic backcolor matching and a multi tab interface to quickly switch between eComics.

Google Browser Sync for Firefox is an extension that continuously synchronizes your browser settings – including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords – across your computers. It also allows you to restore open tabs and windows across different machines and browser sessions. For more info, please visit our FAQ.

I know this is almost two years old but I didn’t stumble across it until recently. I have used Foxmarks for years and have always been pleased with it. You can add a bookmark to your browser at work and when you return home that bookmark would be there on your home computer. Very handy at times.

With Google Browser sync, it goes one step further. I can leave work and not only will my bookmarks by synced up but the windows and tabs I had open at the time will also be waiting for me at home. So I can just leave in the middle of web browsing and pick up right where I left off. Even better.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Adobe has delayed an update that will add support for Flickr users to its Photoshop Express online image editing and storage service. The service, currently at the Beta stage, allows images to be stored or pulled from the users’ other websites and edited without over-writing the original. The latest update, which also adds a ‘Save As…’ feature and the ability to embed slideshows in other websites, has been postponed to allow bugs found late in the development process to be fixed.