The TeleNav Group Helping Out at Second Harvest Food Bank
If you read the blog last week, you may remember this post from Selena G. regarding the kick-off of TeleNav’s Season of Giving. As Selena mentioned, this year we’re supporting the efforts of our local food bank, Second Harvest, through a food collection competition among the various departments here at TeleNav. We also became an official sponsor of Second Harvest’s Food and Fund Drive, which helps to make sure everyone has food on their table during the holiday season.
In addition to the competition we’re having in the office, we decided to head out of the office to support Second Harvest’s efforts to feed those in our local community. A couple of nights ago a few of us headed down to their warehouse and joined a large group of volunteers to help pack up some food packages for families in need. The people at Second Harvest were great and we really enjoyed meeting all of the volunteers and getting to know each other outside of the office walls.
Hong C. Having Fun Packing Food
If you have some extra time on your hands this holiday season, I’d strongly encourage you to volunteer at your local food bank or one of the many non-profit organizations serving your community. They truly depend on volunteers to help those in need and I can tell you that it’s a great experience. It’s also a good team building activity, so you may want to suggest to your manager or HR department that your company get involved in a similar program. Those of us from TeleNav who volunteered had a great time and we’re already talking about the next opportunity.
Selena G. Working Hard at Second Harvest Food Bank
We’d love to hear stories you may have about volunteering as an individual or with your company.
So here’s a nice treat for all of you on a Friday evening. We got our hands on an early version of T-Mobile’s upcoming BlackBerry Bold 9700 and took some time to shoot a brief, sneak-peek video of TeleNav GPS Navigator running on the phone. While there are a number of videos of the phone posted out there on that “series of connected tubes” the rest of us like to call the Internet, I think we’re the first blog to deliver this exclusive demo of our navigation app running on the phone. That’s right, consider it our little gift to you before you head out and pick up the phone next Monday, Nov. 16. If you’re thinking about picking up the phone, I can personally say that it’s a very impressive device. The folks over at RIM did away with the trackball and introduced a new touchpad, which worked very well for me while I was testing the device. The phone’s also very sleek in terms of design, so you can definitely count on it making your friends jealous when you pull it.
As you can see in the video, not only do I assume that all of you out there watching are “party people,” but TeleNav GPS Navigator does a great job of getting me and my camera man Ryan to the local Bank of America. Some of the features I bring up in the video include the ability to share addresses with your contacts, day/night mode, smart spell recognition and the quality of the text-to-speech function.
Enjoy the video and let us know what you think of TeleNav GPS Navigator on the new BlackBerry Bold 9700 or any of the other phones we support. We always appreciate your feedback. Have a great weekend.
The Holiday season is upon us. And, for all of us here at TeleNav, this means that it is time to kick-off our 2009 Season of Giving! TeleNav employees come together each year to collect food and gifts for needy families and children in our local community. Each year, TeleNav departments go head-to-head against each other to collect the most food and raise the most money for our Annual Food and Fund Drive competition. Bragging rights and a TeleNav trophy are on the line and many have already begun to talk strategy. This year we will also collect gifts and help grant wishes for needy children in the Bay Area with the Family Giving Tree organization.
All of us here at TeleNav are thankful to our customers and feel fortunate to have just celebrated our 10 year anniversary. As a company, we are committed to doing what we can to support the community in which we work. We are excited to begin the coming year with fresh ideas and a new approach to corporate giving. In 2010, TeleNav will take more time to serve our community with volunteer efforts.
Please take a moment to watch the clip above. Our CEO, HP Jin, filmed a brief clip in support of the Second Harvest Food Bank.
All of us here at TeleNav wish you and your family Happy Holidays!
The world is much more connected, isn’t it? Whether we’re typing messages in 140 characters on Twitter or throwing our favorite farm animals at each other on Facebook, it seems these social media websites have become very integrated into our daily lives. As such, here at TeleNav, we wanted to dedicate an entire role to handling our social media efforts and recently, we’ve done just that.
Please meet Kenji Onozawa, TeleNav’s new social media “guy.”
Outside of answering your questions and listening to your comments, part of Kenji’s role here will be to provide you with some behind-the-scenes TeleNav videos. As such, we thought what a better way to introduce him than put him in front of a Flipcam? And that’s exactly what we did.
Well, the new phones continue to come down the pipeline and the latest is the Samsung Moment for the Sprint Network. The Moment is an Android based device and after having the chance to play around with it, I must say it’s one very slick device. And even better, Sprint Navigation (powered by TeleNav) worked beautifully on the device, with the large touch screen providing an excellent view of the application for easy navigation.
We decided to hop in the car and take the Samsung Moment and Sprint Navigation for a quick spin. It was around lunch time and I was craving some Indian food, so you’ll see in the video that we conducted a search for Indian restaurants in our area. Some of the features you’ll see in the demo video include visual and audio turn-by-turn directions, full text-to-speech including spoken street names, real-time traffic information and our point of interests search including rated listings.
The Samsung Moment hit stores this past Sunday, November 1. If you’re looking for a new phone and want something that will make your friends jealous, the Samsung Moment may be the phone for you. If you’ve already picked one up, tell us what you think about Sprint Navigation. We always appreciate your feedback.
Friday, a registration statement was filed for TeleNav’s initial public offering (IPO). You can find a full copy of our press release here.
As you may know, the SEC has strict guidelines about what a company can communicate when it is in registration. We’re officially in a quiet period (or waiting period). Because of that, we cannot answer questions or provide comments about the IPO, our registration statement or other topics that would cause us to run afoul of the SEC’s rules.
However, we will continue to share news and other product information on our blog and will also continue to answer questions you have about our products. In other words, business as usual for the most part so please keep your comments and questions coming as we appreciate all of your feedback.
For those of you living in the San Francisco Bay Area, you may have been impacted (like many of us here working at the TeleNav headquarters) by the sudden closing of the Bay Bridge last night due to a cable breaking. Thousands of people depend on the Bay Bridge each day to drive to and from work, so this closing has a heavy impact on drivers all around the area. People who use the bridge on a daily basis now have to depend on using other roadways, which has added more traffic to the already congested freeways the area is so well known for. I myself had the privilege of my commute taking twice as long as normal today due to increased traffic.
In order to assist users of our applications driving in the Bay Area, our engineers acted quickly on the news of the closing and adjusted our routing engine to avoid the Bay Bridge. This not only helps visitors to the area who might not be aware of the closing, but also those people who use the Bay Bridge and may not be sure of the best alternate route to use while it’s closed. Our real-time traffic information is also another nice feature in times like these when roadways for miles in each direction are impacted by the closure.
If you recall, our engineers were able to shut the Bay Bridge down on a previous occasion when it was closed for construction during the Labor Day Weekend. As we mentioned at that time, this is a significant advantage of having a connected navigation experience such as that provided by the applications TeleNav develops. This connectivity enables our team to act quickly in these situations and ultimately help our customers in times when they need it most. The personal navigation device you bought last year can’t do that. So, if you’re traveling in the Bay Area while the Bay Bridge is being repaired, you can feel comfortable knowing you won’t be routed over the bridge.
AT&T and Pantech launched a new device this week, the Pantech Reveal, which is Pantech’s first “single-slider” phone. Overall, the phone has a nice feel to it and the inclusion of two key pads, the number pad when the slider is closed and the full keyboard when it’s open, makes it very handy to use. You can quickly dial a number with the slider closed and easily slide out the keyboard for messaging purposes. But perhaps the best feature in our humble opinion is that the phone comes preloaded with AT&T Navigator (powered by TeleNav).
We decided to take the Pantech Reveal out for a little spin and test some of the features included in AT&T Navigator on the phone. And because sharing is caring, we thought we’d bring along a video camera to show you the application in action. As you can see, it was very easy for me to find the destination I wanted to drive to and head out on my way. Some of the features you’ll see in the video include onscreen and voice turn-by-turn directions, text-to-speech (i.e. turn right on Kifer Road, not just turn right), real-time traffic alerts and the ease in which the POI database can be used to find a location.
Enjoy the video and if you picked up a Reveal or are planning to, let us know what you think of AT&T Navigator on the phone.
If you’re an iPhone owner using AT&T Navigator, you may have noticed that an update to the application became available last week. Hopefully you’ve had the chance to update your app and get a look at the new features. BUT, for those of you who haven’t had time to do this yet or who may not have found all of the updates within the application, we thought we’d shoot a brief video demonstrating a few of the new features.
This video includes the new support for landscape view while navigating, integrated iPod controls and improved audio. Enjoy the video and keep the feedback coming on what you’d like to see added to the AT&T Navigator for iPhone application or any of the other applications we develop here at TeleNav.
As some of you may know, last week CTIA held its annual Wireless I.T. & Entertainment event at the San Diego Convention Center. This event is always an exciting time in the mobile industry as many new phones are announced, cool new applications are launched, and a number of awards are handed out. A group of us from TeleNav headed down to San Diego for a few days to catch up with old friends in the industry and get a first-hand look of everything that was happening at the show. The San Diego weather and views (like this one from our hotel below) were a nice bonus.
Marina in San Diego
There was a lot going on for TeleNav last week in San Diego, so we thought we’d provide a brief recap. First off, there were a number of new phones announced last week that feature the apps we develop for some of our carrier partners including AT&T Navigator and Sprint Navigation as well as our own TeleNav GPS Navigator application. AT&T announced four upcoming phones including the Pantech Reveal, Pantech Impact, Samsung Mythic, and Samsung Flight. Sprint also announced a new phone, the Samsung Moment. And we can’t forget T-Mobile, which also came to play with the announcement of new phones including a myTouch 3G Fender Limited Edition phone and the newly announced T-Mobile Tap. I can’t wait for the chance to play with some of these phones. And while that’s an impressive lineup of devices, the image below of some phones sporting the applications we develop is pretty impressive as well. We showed these phones at the Pepcom Mobile Focus press event.
An impressive lineup of phones
People enjoying the Pepcom Mobile Focus event
But that’s not all. Ravi Acharya, associate director of marketing for TeleNav’s B2B products, also participated on a panel at CTIA titled “Public and Corporate Fleets” where he discussed the benefits of our TeleNav Track products. TeleNav was also up for two awards last week for our TeleNav GPS Navigator v5.5 application. We were named a finalist in the Best Mobile Consumer Application category for the CTIA Hot for the Holidays Award. Jitterbug took the top honor for its LiveNurse application, so congrats to everyone at Jitterbug. We were also up for a Location 2.0 Summit Fast-Pitch Award in the Consumer Application category. We’re still waiting on those results, so keep your fingers crossed for us.
Ravi Acharya speaking at CTIA
As you can see, it was a very busy week for us, but we all had a great time and appreciated everyone from the CTIA, Pepcom and Location 2.0 events being so helpful to us.
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