I have a simple (my first Python effort) GPS satellite monitor, plus track and speed:

http://www.zdez.org/GpsStatus-0.1.deb

1. You need to turn on the GPS yourself. Control panel for location, map, or "/usr/libexec/navicore-gpsd-helper" as user (not root) in the xterm will turn it on, as will my mingpsd application

2. It doesn't process the GPS stream thoroughly so will break if the NMEA sentences are bad. My programs tend to validate them, and there's no problem with the n810 internal, but Bluetooth sometimes drops characters.

3. Blue means too low signal. Then the color is "temperature color" based, from deep red to white hot. A filled circle means it is being used for the GPS calculation.

Remember this is my first python program, so it is likely very ugly. Improvements, suggestions, etc. are welcome.