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Showing posts from November, 2009

WAZE combining game/mobile and crowdsourced maps

Waze, a free provider of driver-generated maps and real-time road information, announced a new version of its free navigation app to include fun gaming elements in addition to smart algorithms, so that waze maps all over the world are updated even quicker. The consumer application is available on the Apple AppStore and the Android Market Place and can be downloaded from the waze web site for Symbian and Windows Mobile devices. The new version adds more capabilities to waze's already popular 'munching' game that encourages users to validate road driving directions as they drive around. The game will now be upgraded to munch `road goodies' - cherries, hammers and small gift packages worth bonus points - that will be placed in areas where the waze system has identified map problems. The highest scoring `road goodies' will be placed in locations with the most severe map issues, and as users drive around to munch these `goodies', waze's system will utilize the dr...

Google turn by turn navigation: the good enough revolution

The announcement of a GPS pack included in the next Android 2.0 (product from Google) has created the stockmarket to dump shares of companies like Tomtom. Having gone through the demo of this Google GPS pack, I have following comments for discussion: + Over the air (off-board) - "free" is quite relative if you have to access the info through mobile data: mobile data packs for connectivity to the cloud are not 'free or unlimited' in my first trial of nav4 free application, a 10 km drive through Brussels did cost me 11 Euros:); alternative networks like wifi are not really of use when on the move; - the Google GPS software is thus a competitor for the applications on smartphones that take maps and info over the air; Nokia provides free mapping services, with a premium for voice guided traffic; a real free GPS over the air service is NAV4all , already existing a few years now, with good maps, speed traffic information, etc... - battery life: wonder if you will be able...