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Posts tagged GPS
TeleNav Shuts Down Bay Bridge (Virtually) Again
Oct 28th
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The Bay Bridge
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.
A Busy Week for TeleNav at CTIA
Oct 14th
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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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