Sigh - it's looking more and more like it's going to be tough to use the gps unit in NYC. In the past week I've been to many different areas around Manhattan and the only two places I've been able to get a "lock" were in Central Park and the Southern-facing window of my apartment on the 22nd floor.

Today I walked from 70th down to 46th and back along Amsterdam (10th Ave). I didn't get a single gps lock anywhere along the route. That's a North-South street, too. Not sure it's going to get any easier to have a view of the Southern sky in NYC.

To be fair, I also have trouble with my TomTom gps mapping on my treo when in NYC. The tall buildings just block too much signal. I was hoping to fair better with the new Sony unit, but it's doing about the same. I'm curious to know the specs but haven't had a chance to look them up yet (i.e. SiRF star III).

It would be a nice-to-have feature in the Sony software to just map the route that's been collected in the gps unit. The only way to know what coordinates are stored is to apply the route to photos which doesn't necessarily cover every point on the route. I have a Garmin Edge 305 for cycling. Granted it's for a very different purpose, but it's really nice to be able to connect the Edge to Google Earth and download the gps route directly to a map. I'd really like to see a map of my route, with photos scattered along the route. Of course, I'm still learning the product and I could have missed this feature. But I suspect Sony will be adding more bells and whistles as the product matures with newer versions.

update 11/24

I finally found time to upload the photos. I went with Picasa for this post since that's what I'm most familiar with. http://picasaweb.google.com/pjbmail/NYCWalk071107/photo?authkey=xuWcBUR7qmY#map

In addition to the photos, check out this link for 9/11 stories on my local firehouse NY's Bravest. They lost 12 of 13 brave men that day. I just learned that there was a book called "Firehouse" written about their story. A few other books as well it appears - It's amazing what this search turned up.

http://www.google.com/search?q=engine+40+ladder+35

This is a free ebook for kids - written by a 7 year old
http://www.aboutourkids.org/aboutour/articles/crisis_ladder.pdf