The Inquirer has news of a new Linux based phone, the OpenMoko. It looks pretty good and, apart from a couple of device drivers the software is completely open.

What’s really surprising about the story is that at the time of writing a Google search for OpenMoko returns no results. Nada. Have the INQ got the name right? If so how the hell have FIC kept it so quiet? And why?

Still, it looks interesting and the $350 price makes Trolltech’s tag of $695 for what appears to be a similar device look a bit sick. Evidently Linux phones have to be green. Who knew?

I’ve just learnt (thanks Klaus) that the industrious folks at Wintec have released another firmware upgrade for the WBT 100 and WBT 200. It seems that they’ve taken the opportunity to change the data format - so I’m going to have to update gpsbabel again. I’m guessing that eventually they’ll run out of things to add :)

As I write gpsbabel does not support the new format - so don’t upgrade your firmware just yet. I’m working on a fix and will post as soon as I have one.

Update: Or maybe not… The data format doesn’t seem to have changed - but gpsbabel does now sometimes timeout while the device is erasing its flash memory. I’ve changed the timeout and that change should make it into gpsbabel sometime soon.

The Wintec WBT-200 is a cute GPS receiver in a tiny package that streams NMEA data over Bluetooth and USB. It can also log GPS data for subsequent download. I’ve been using it to capture tracklogs for upload to Open Streetmap and I’ve been hugely impressed by the fast startup time and accuracy of the logged data.

The supplied software is Windows only but with a little fiddling you can get it working with your Mac or Linux box. Here’s how.

2006/08/06 Update: There’s a new firmware version for the WBT-200 (R4) that changes the data format used by the device (thanks G. Francisco for the tip-off). I’ve just submitted a patch to support the new format to Robert Lipe (gpsbabel). It should make it into the gpsbabel CVS within the next few hours. If you need a binary built with this patch for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD or Mac OS let me know.