Silicon.com picks up on market rumours that Microsoft are viewing the Amsterdam based portable SatNav maker as an acquisition target…. If true, it would mean that Microsoft are really jumping into the consumer GI marketplace, are they after the great software platform or are they thinking of a new hardware business line ? Other than the Xbox MSFT don’t have a great track record with hardware…
Thanks to Adena at allpoints for pointing out this press release from Navteq announcing their new “Sat Nav” Challenge website which allows users to find out if there is updated data for their navigation system.
Great I though.. I checked for my system, only to find that my system is not listed.., although my Nissan X-Trail has a factory fit navigation system, the data comes from Zenrin and is not compatible with either navteq or Tele Atlas data for that matter. Zenrin as you might guess don’t seem to offer updates..
My car is two years old, the data on the navigation DVD was published two years earlier so I am using at least four year old data – and I am unable to update.
In my view this is not an acceptable situation, once again a new technologies growth is been limited by a “walled garden’ approach to technology in the same way LBS will not take off until the applications are separated from the network providers, sat nav will stall unless there is an open data format for navigation systems.
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
Just on my way back from a whistle stop trip to Innsbruck – there are still a few places in Europe where it is still only just possible to visit in a day.. I was there to present to some of the team drafting the technical details that will make the Inspire directive to share environmental information in Europe work… well as soon at is passed in a form acceptable to all 🙂
My Journey was only just possible because i was trying out one of the new Tom Tom navigation systems, which came fully loaded with no only the full European road network but North American roads also.. This really is the ipod of navigation systems !
So a round trip of 450Km later I’m back at the airport in Munich and I did not get lost once !! – Now if only my flight was not delayed…
Written and submitted from the Delta Crown Room Lounge, at Munich Airport using the t-mobile wifi network.
This evenings Evening Standard, London’s evening newspaper reports that for the first time London’s Black Taxi Cab drivers are to be allowed to supplement they “Knowledge” of the streets of London with GPS navigation systems.
For the Public Carriage Office, not an organisation known for its grip on technology (have you ever tried to pay by credit card in a London Taxi ?) to adopt this is a massive leap forward.
This could get interesting.. is the navigation system a match for the encyclopaedic knowledge of you average London taxi driver, I actually doubt it, the intricate knowledge of the streets of London and how congested they are likely to be at any point of time is something very difficult to capture at present – another “sense of place” type of data where traditional GI approaches fail.
Still there is no longer an excuse to hear.. “Sorry Guv, Can’t go south of the river!”
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
I spent a very enjoyable Saturday this weekend, helping to man the Ordnance Survey stand at the Outdoors Show, a public exhibition for everybody who enjoys the outdoors.
Amongst all the stands showing canoes, sleeping bags, climbing ropes, and maps !! what really got my interest was the every growing number of vendors of “high tech” equipment that offer, in effect, consumer GIS software.
Doing very good business were Memory Map, Anquet and Fugawi all selling applications which provide the display of OS Landranger and Explorer mapping on PC’s, and most relevantly on PDA’s and Smartphones.
Garmin had a large stand with their wide range of consumer focused GPS recievers, including the nuvi, which I blogged about last year
But “Best of Show” for me was some real innovation from a small Cambridge company, Viewranger. The OS research team have demonstrated in the past a PDA prototype “Magic window”, which demonstrated the concept of using a mobile device and a geographic information to allow users to identify geographic features based on their location and the know location of the viewer.
It’s fantastic to see Ordnance Survey partners making these concepts reality, ViewRanger is an immersive mapping tool that displays a labelled representation of a view from any particular point on a GPS enabled, symbian based mobile phone.
It also allows users to upload “tags” or comments and photographs of particular locations onto a central server, where they can be shared, a very nice touch and another example of how important social networking techniques will be for geographic information.
Viewrangers’ Mike Brocklehurst, told me they are working on a windows mobile version of this application, so although its still early days – it clear outdoor gadgets are becoming very cool !
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
I got thinking last week about the actual impact of GPS navigation systems on peoples driving habits after reports of satnavs sending people through villages as short cuts. I’m not sure this is actually the case, why I’m uncertain was an experience on a Friday evening a few weeks previously…
I travel north up the M3 almost every night, and just after the Farnborough junction hit the end of a 10-15 mile tailback. Using the AA trafficwatch service on my mobile I discovered the cause of the queue was an accident at the M25 junction a few hours earlier which had involved a truck carrying livestock !! visions of cows and sheep on the motorway – the end result was the motorway was completely closed.
As I sat in the traffic in the darkness I could not but help to notice than at least 10% of the cars had the glow of a GPS navigation system on their dashboards, if you regularly drive in the UK at night you will no doubt have become aware of the rapid growth of satnavs over the past six months or so – well done tom-tom !!!
So as I switched my satnav to detour mode, to get me off the motorway at the next junction, I had the expectation I would be joined by many others making our ways through the A-Roads of Surrey. However when I came off the motorway and followed the route shown in the map below I was almost the only car on the road, it seemed many where happy to sit and wait on the motorway ?
Image produced from the Ordnance Survey Get-a-map service. Image reproduced with kind permission of Ordnance Survey and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland.
With some smugness I rejoined the now empty M3 at the M25 Junction and drove home… so my question is, just how confident are people in using satnav’s to go “off route” ?
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.
Adena at All Points Blog links to an article on Galileo in the UK’s WhatPC magazine. Now I am a little sceptical about the business model to operate Galileo, but technically i think it is an appropriate solution, but one that has been oversold.
While it is right to question the multitudes of “new” applications only possible with Galileo, it is a fact that the existing uses of Global Positioning constrained by the current GPS technology will be reduced, for example the OS surveyors maintaining our database find it almost impossible to use GPS in highly urban areas, or sometimes even too close to tree canopies – these limitations will be removed.
Other applications such as the use of precision landing systems for aircraft are possible today, but for safety reasons require the quality of location signal that Galileo will provide.
The WhatPC? article also seems to confuse the availability of good quality data and positioning, just because the UK has excellent large scale databases and a comprehensive system of postcodes does not mean that you don’t need accurate positioning technology – actually I would argue it means you actually are more reliant on positioning to provide useful services.
But at the end of the day we need to realise that Galileo is equally a political project, and who is to say that a future President McCain might not just switch of the GPS signal one day because of a potential security alert in Washington.
Expected to be announced at cebit next week a new generation of tomtom navigation systems will bring a larger screen, and the ability to play mp3 files downloaded via a pc application, which will also sync new mapping and points of interest databases. Think of iTunes for maps!!
So device convergence continues….
Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.