If you are a regular radio listener in major cities in the USA, you've probably heard several ads for TomTom Go portable navigation systems. TomTom has a different strategy in France. They are running a two team road rally called TomTom Raid. The teams were given no food, no money, no credit cards, just a TomTom GO 700 and a Smart car to travel across France. The teams left Paris on Monday and the race will continue until December 8.

You can follow the progress of the race daily at the website TomTomRaid.com. The site is entirely in French, so it may make more sense to our readers in Quebec and people who studied French in school than it does to me.

My father asked me what a TomTom was the other day. For those of you who haven't seen one yet, they are portable navigation systems that can be moved from car to car. They are simple in that you plug them into your car's electrical system, mount them to your car windshield, turn them on, and go. There are two models of the TomTom GO that are being marketed in the United States:

• TomTom GO 300, a turnkey GPS device that gives door-to-door directions between any two addresses in the United States, maps included on a secure digital card. The system includes spoken turn-by-turn guidance.
• TomTom GO 700, including all of the features of the 300 plus faster CPU, more memory, a hard disk for larger map and route storage, and bluetooth for handsfree phone integration.

[ via Operation Gadget reader Alexander Baarde and Alt-Buzz ]

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