Garmin, MapQuest offer interfaces
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Blog: Garmin offers some APIs so Web sites and its GPS units can communicate, while MapQuest announces a beta version of an ActionScript interface for Flash fans.
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MapQuest Audio Directions on Sprint-Nextel Network Like InfoSpace, MapQuest is also launching voice (text to speech) turn-by-turn directions on the Sprint-Nextel network. Here&#8217;s today&#8217;s MapQuest announcement: &#8220;MapQuest Navigator leverages Sprint&#8217;s leading edge location-based services platforms and GPS-enabled phones to acquire wireless device location information, letting subscribers take their navigation system with them at all times and get [...]
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Safend, an international provider of endpoint i
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(InfoWorld) - Nokia Corp. has added new features to its mobile mapping application, with a revamped user interface and a status indicator to alert users when they're connected to a GPS (Global Positioning System) satellite. The new version of Nokia Maps is free and became available for download on Tuesday. Other improvements include a more refined "nearby" search feature, which scouts out preprogrammed points of interest on the maps based on where the user is located. Basic route planning is free, although users may incur data transfer fees from their carriers. Other navigation upgrades are available for a fee. Nokia charges for a voice-guided navigation feature as well as other city and travel guides. Guides contain information on local cafes, music and clothing stores, museums and Wi-Fi hotspots, Nokia said. Nokia is offering a three-day trial for some of the advanced navigation features. Nokia said map data will be available for 150 countries by the end of 2007, with 50 of those able to use the application's navigation feature. Nokia has published a list of countries for which a navigation license is sold. Also improved is the PC Map Loader application, which lets users load maps onto their devices from their home computers before needing a map on the road. That function is now 10 times faster. PC Map Loader is also a free download. The mapping application,Â launched in February, is compatible with devices running on Symbian Series 60 second and third edition operating systems. Â
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uLocate Communications, Inc., an  award-winning publisher of wireless location-based services (LBS), today  announced support for GeoRSS and KML to bring worldwide content to the  WHERE mobile application. WHERE now provides easy tools to add KML and  GeoRSS from Mapufacture to the phone.
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(InfoWorld) - MicrosoftÂ researchers are working on a variety of location-based tools, some of which could turn into interesting commercial applications. In one project, the researchers lent out cheap GPSÂ devices to drivers and asked them to leave the devices on the dashboards of their cars for a couple of weeks, said John Krumm, a researcher at Microsoft Research. He discussed the results of his work at the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit in Redmond, Washington, on Monday. Krumm's group examined the data they collected from the GPS units for a number of different factors, including what time of day people were most often in their cars and where they most commonly were going at what times, such as to commercial or residential areas. That data was perhaps most relevant to the group's efforts to create a model to predict where and when users would stop and get out of their cars. Krumm imagined a number of reasons why that information might be useful. For example, the provider of a navigation system might be able to predict that because a user is near the airport, the user is likely to go there, and so offer the user a coupon for airport parking. An intern on Krumm's team is working on determining whether hybrid cars could use such predictive modeling, which could predict the length of a trip as well as hills and the speed of the vehicle during the trip, in order to efficiently allocate the car's resources. Scott Counts, another researcher, is working on a community application that would let fitness enthusiasts share exercise routes. SlamXR users carry a small device that includes a range of sensors, such as heart rate monitor, temperature sensor, altimeter, GPS receiver, and Bluetooth radio. Users of the device can collect data along their favorite bike route, for example, and upload that data onto the Web site. The site shows the route on the map and includes such dataÂ speed and altitude along the route. Other users can search for routes based on difficulty, distance, target heart rate, elevation change, and activity. Users can also tag the routes for easier searching. Technologies developed at Microsoft Research could become commercial products from Microsoft, or the company may sell them to external sources. More than 700 researchers work in the group in five labs around the world. The event in Redmond is an opportunity for Microsoft Research workers to spend time with members of academia, in part to discuss issues in computer science research.
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Free software, fee-based service is an attempt to compete in GPS device market.
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(InfoWorld) - While drivers are accustomed to using traffic reports to assess road conditions, pedestrians who navigate cities are typically left without aid to determine the best route. But researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology using wikis and the Semantic Web look to change the way people map and navigate their cities. The Wiki City project, run by MIT's SENSEable City Laboratory, aims to apply wiki technology to the mapmaking process. The project's ultimate product will permit anyone to upload content to a map and utilize Semantic Web principles to cross search multiple layers of information. Wiki City Rome, an early incarnation of the project's user-generated maps, used GPS and cell phone data to produce a real-time map during an all-night festival held in the city on Sept. 8. A Web site featuring a satellite image of Rome displayed event locations and the position of buses and pedestrian traffic in real time. Buses equipped with GPS devices fed their locations to the project every minute, while cell phone data was constantly received to show how crowds were moving around the city. An image of the map was also projected in one of Rome's main squares. "If people know about the state of their environment in real time (as opposed to a static map), they can make better informed decisions about how to move about in the city which in term increases efficiency," Kristian Kloeckl, one of Wiki City Rome's team leaders, wrote in an e-mail interview. Wiki City Rome served as an initial step in the Wiki City project. Future projects involve introducing the wiki city concept to other cities that have partnered with the SENSEable City Laboratory. The list currently includes only European cities because their public transportation networks and outdoor spaces correspond with the project's aim of studying how people react and move about in public spaces, Kloeckl said. But the project is applicable to non-European cities, he said. He mentioned that a Boston-area furniture company is interested in placing displays in their products that would show a wiki city map. Wiki City reseachers ultimately want to introduce full wiki concepts to the project and allow any person or business to upload information to a map, Kloeckl said. The wiki method of permitting anyone to add any information lends itself to fraudsters. One possible resolution involves introducing a ranking system similar to the one eBayÂ uses with sellers. "Users supply the rankings. The system is completely independent. People gradually acquire reliability. This approach would be the most coherent for this type of structure," Kloeckl said in a telephone interview. Wiki City wants to combine different levels of data that, when searched, provide an answer incorporating each level of data. In Kloeckl's vision of a person using a full-featured wiki city map, a runner would use the map to search for a jogging course based on a city's traffic and air quality as well as the runner's health. "Now making these layers intersect in a meaningful way should give you a proposal of a jogging path that corresponds to your combined query," Kloeckl wrote. Kloeckl also provided another example in which a person would use a map to locate a store with a specific bottle of wine and plot a course from the store to a friend's home. Some challenges remain before a real-time map helps people navigate their cities. While obvious devices to display a wiki city map include cell phones, PDAs, and smartphones, Kloeckl also wants more utilitarian structures, such as bus stops, to offer access to the maps. "Everyone is familiar with a bus stop," he said. "So it's using the data with objects people are familiar with." User interface issues also require additional thought, Kloeckl said. While users need to access the information with ease, uploading that data to the wiki also requires a simple method, Kloeckl said. He noted that the upload system must require little time and effort since some of the content will come from people who are moving around a city. Finally, the data layers need to be arranged in such a way that a search produces pertinent results. Solving this problem involves further developments in the Semantic Web, an evolving component of the Web being developed by the Worldwide Web Consortium. The Semantic Web aims to take data and apply standards that allow computers to play a greater role in locating, finding, and presenting information. This will permit computers to understand the standards and produce more contextual search results. "We need information that is time and place relevant so it can be queried on a semantic structure," Kloeckl said. "We need a way to structure data so that it can be cross-queried." Pedestrians may eventually turn to interactive maps to avoid the masses or catch a bus, at the same time that their movements become part of the map's display.
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Google Inc. has introduced several widgets designed to help non-technical users persoanlize maps with weather and other information.
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We stopped by the Garmin booth in the CES South Hall to get some hands-on time with the company's new GPS devices.
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Blog: Google launches Maps feature that lets you customize driving directions by clicking and dragging the route to other spots on the map
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Manually tagging things is a pain and, if one doesn't have obvious geographical features in the photo, it may be hard to locate them exactly on a map. So--how about marrying GPS data to the photos? It's a sound idea, it's doable, but it requires a slightl
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Garmin Ltd., the nation's leading maker of satellite-powered navigational devices, is getting into the wireless phone business with a handset that incorporates GPS.
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New features that evolved out of Hack Day let you combine two maps and choose colors when shopping.
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You can look at a U.S. map with a marker for each IT facility and receive instant reporting if there is a problem with the availability, performance or security of one of your systems.
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O.K., so I don't like asking for directions. But I don't get lost so often that I need to spend more than &#36;1,000 on a built-in car navigation system to plot my course with global positioning satellites.
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ESPOO, Finland, February 8  /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Nokia today announced that it is making its smart2go mapping and navigation platform, available for free download (http://www.smart2go.com/), enabling millions of people to use the most comprehensive map coverage offered on a mobile device.