Some guests arrive fashionably late for the party and bring a very nice bottle of wine for the hosts. That guest could be Panasonic, which used the SEMA show in Las Vegas to launch its first portable navigation device, the feature-rich, widescreen Strada CN-GP50U.

In short: a 5-inch touchscreen, Bluetooth (for cell phones), SD Card slot, $500 price. Given the size of its screen, this PND is meant to be a car (not occasional-pedestrian) unit. Bells and whistles include an electronic compass that compensates in tunnels and Lane Assist--meaning on a multi-lane highway, it shows you which lanes to occupy (versus the ones that would force you to exit or take the wrong turn). The SD socket isn't for music but for quick updates to the Navteq map database. Shipments are due in December, just in time for the twelfth day of Christmas.