Sprint Navigation (powered by TeleNav) on the Palm Pre
If you’re a customer of our carrier partner Sprint and plan on traveling this Labor Day weekend, you should consider using Sprint Navigation (powered by TeleNav) on your phone to guide you to your destination and also help you find your way around once you arrive. The application transforms your Sprint phone into a lean, mean, navigation machine and brings the features of a personal navigation device right to your phone. Better yet, it’s now available on more phones than ever before. Sprint announced today that Sprint Navigation is available on more than 60 Sprint phones, including the popular Palm Pre, one of my personal favorite devices that launched this summer.
A few of the Sprint Navigation features you’ll be able to use on your trip this weekend include:
Voice and on-screen turn-by-turn directions complete with 2D and 3D maps to guide you to wherever you may be traveling this weekend
Traffic alerts with one-click rerouting to help you avoid the congested roadways expected this Labor Day weekend and get you to your destination as quickly and stress-free as possible
Real-time gas price listings help you find the cheapest gas prices along your route, helping you save a few bucks to buy that “I visited Branson and lived to tell about it” T-shirt you’ve always wanted
More than 10 million business listings to help you find restaurants, hotels or nightlife spots along the way or when you arrive at your vacation destination
Pre-plan your trip online to find all of the locations you want to visit during your vacation and instantly send the information to your phone so it’s there and ready to go as soon as you start up the car
You don’t have to rely solely on my word about how much Sprint Navigation can help you this Labor Day weekend and in your daily lives. After all, I might be a little biased. Today’s announcement includes quotes from three Sprint customers who use Sprint Navigation on their phones to help them do everything from streaming turn-by-turn directions through their vehicle while listening to Pandora at the same time to finding a new route around unexpected construction in a familiar area. James Kendrick of the popular tech blog JKOnTheRun also weighed in on his experience with Sprint Navigation on the Palm Pre, saying the app works just as well as a personal navigation device.
So, if you’re a Sprint customer and looking for an app to add a little guidance to your life this Labor Day weekend and beyond, check out Sprint Navigation. We’d love to hear your stories on how you used Sprint Navigation during your trip.
Are you a fan of TeleNav GPS Navigator? If so, here’s your chance to let the world know. TeleNav GPS Navigator is currently in contention for CTIA’s “Hottest Web Pick Award.” Share your love for TeleNav GPS Navigator by casting a vote.
All you have to do is visit the TeleNav entry on the contest page and select “Mark as a Favorite” in the top right. It’s that simple. Voting ends October 5, so cast your vote now and be sure to tell your friends (that is of course, if they are fans of TeleNav GPS Navigator too).
Thanks for your votes and we have fingers crossed that we’ll come out on top.
An example of Augmented Reality, with information digitally overlaying a real-world view
If you’ve been keeping an eye on technology and LBS publications recently, you may have noticed that something called “Augmented Reality” (AR) seems to be the latest craze. Although I can’t guarantee the technology will reach iconic status like the slap bracelet and hypercolor t-shirt crazes of my childhood, I wanted to take a little time to discuss the technology and how it’s currently being used for a variety of mobile functions.
The basic premise behind AR is the overlay of digital or computerized images on a real-world view, whether it be direct or indirect. The digital imagery is used to supplement or enhance the real-world view in some way, providing interactive content or relevant information. One of the most common and identifiable uses of this is in the sports world, with AR being used to create the yellow first down line that is overlayed digitally on the field during broadcasts of college and NFL Football. That in itself would be enough for me to become a fan of AR, but that’s only the beginning.
With the ever expanding capabilities of today’s mobile devices, a number of companies have begun to use AR to overlay digital information onto smartphone screens. Using a combination of the phone’s camera view, GPS capabilities and internal compass, it’s possible to use AR to display relevant information on top of what your viewing right out of your phone’s camera lens. Don’t believe me? Here’s a post from The Boy Genius Report showing an AR app that will locate traffic cameras in the direction you’re viewing and enable you to instantly access the view from the lens of any camera you choose. As you can see, the indicators of the traffic camera locations are overlayed digitally on top of the actual view you see through the camera, and this information changes as you face different directions.
GPS Business News recently posted an in-depth article on the growing trend of AR within the LBS industry. The article identifies a number of companies who are using AR to do everything from displaying small “wiki” information bubbles on top of your camera’s view to give you insight into what you may be looking at, to pointing your phone’s camera in a specific direction and receiving an overlay of where the closest train station is. It appears industry experts aren’t seeing this as just another ”fad” technology either, as the article points out that research firm Gartner has identified AR as one of the top ten disruptive technologies for 2008-2012.
I don’t know about you, but this is the type of advancement that gets me excited to live in this technology fueled world of ours and to work in an industry with as much promise as LBS. Just think of the possibilities . . .
…the Pike County School system in Troy, Alabama believes it can.
According to the local newspaper today, the Pike County School system has installed GPS phones on all of its buses this year. The Sprint Nextel phones run TeleNav Track and allow the transportation department to monitor where each bus is during the day as well as keep detailed mileage reports for each bus.
If needed, the school officials can notify parents of the whereabouts of each bus without having to call each driver to determine their location.
According to the Pike County transportation department, buses in other places have been hijacked so this system helps prevent similar incidents happening in their school district.
For those of you using AT&T Navigator (powered by TeleNav) on your iPhone, you may have noticed that an update is now available for the application. Contact integration is now available which means you’re able to easily navigate to the addresses you have stored for your contacts right from the application.
We shot this short video demo to show all of you iPhone users how to use the contact integration feature in AT&T Navigator on your phone. As you can see, it takes only a few steps to start navigating to a contact’s address.
The Magnavox X-Set, one of the original GPS Devices
Those of you who follow our blog and TeleNav news closely may know that a member of our management team, co-founder and CTO Bob Rennard, was a principal engineer in the design of the original GPS (Global Positioning System). Bob is a walking encyclopedia for all things GPS (and a number of other topics for that matter) and we like to refer to him as the “Father of GPS” around the office here in Sunnyvale.
BUT, we’re not the only ones who recognize Bob as the leading authority on GPS. His distinction as the “Father of GPS” extends far beyond the office walls and he’s often tapped to provide his insight and knowledge of GPS for a number of reasons. One such occasion recently occurred when Bob was asked to participate in a Q&A for the Web site GPS Lodge. Check out the Q&A here, where you can see Bob take a stroll down memory lane to explain what the original GPS equipment looked like (such as the Magnavox X-Set pictured in this post) and how TeleNav became a reality.
If you have questions about GPS, let us know and we’ll see if we can get Bob to provide some answers to your questions.
TeleNav GPS Navigator v5.5 on the T-Mobile myTouch 3G
We’ve had a great week giving away subscriptions to TeleNav GPS Navigator in support of our launch on the new T-Mobile myTouch 3G, but sadly, all good things must come to an end. If you haven’t been able to follow the blog this week, I’ll provide a brief recap. On Tuesday we announced that TeleNav GPS Navigator v5.5 would be available for T-Mobile’s myTouch 3G, an Android-based device that hit stores on Wednesday. Check out Mary Beth’s post from Monday night for details as well as a video demo we shot of TeleNav GPS Navigator v5.5 in action. To celebrate this launch, we’ve been giving away a six-month subscription to TeleNav GPS Navigator (or one of the navigation applications from our carrier partners) to one winner of our trivia contest each day.
For those of you who haven’t won the daily contest, the application is available now on our Web store for $9.99/mo. with a free 30-day trial. So, all of you who’ve already picked up your new myTouch 3G, head to the store and try the application for yourself. The application will turn your myTouch 3G into your very own personal navigation device complete with real-time traffic information, spoken directions, more than 10 million business listings with categories such as Wi-Fi hotspots, gas by price, ATMs and voice destination entry.
Here’s today’s contest question. The first person to comment on this post with the correct answer to the following question will win the prize. Previous winners from this week’s contest are not eligible for a second prize.
- In the video demo included with Mary Beth’s post from Monday, what is the name of the first street I turn on? I say the street name when mentioning that the application provides full text-to-speech with spoken street names. HINT: A well known NASCAR driver with the last name Sorenson shares the same name.
TeleNav GPS Navigator v5.5 on the T-Mobile myTouch 3G
We’re keeping the giveaways running here on the TeleNav blog in support of our recent launch of TeleNav GPS Navigator v5.5 for the new T-Mobile myTouch 3G which is in stores now. This is a great looking Android-based device and as you can see from the video included in Mary Beth’s post from Monday, TeleNav GPS Navigator looks great running on the phone. A free 30-day trial of TeleNav GPS Navigator for the T-Mobile myTouch 3G is available now on our online store. The trial provides you with turn-by-turn onscreen and spoken directions, voice destination entry, access to more than 10 million business listings, gas by price search and real-time traffic information with one-button rerouting. If you’re satisfied with the trial, after the 30-day period you can purchase the application for just $9.99/mo.
Here’s today’s contest question. The first person to comment on this post with the correct answer to the following question will win the prize. Previous winners from this week’s contest are not eligible for a second prize.
The T-Mobile myTouch 3G officially hit stores today and for those of you who haven’t been following our blog over the past few days, this means TeleNav GPS Navigator v5.5 is also available on this new Android-based phone. As we mentioned in yesterday’s post, we’ll be celebrating this launch with a daily giveaway of a six month subscription to TeleNav GPS Navigator (or one of the navigation applications from our carrier partners). You can get a 30-day trial of TeleNav GPS Navigator v5.5 for the myTouch 3G here on our online store.
TeleNav GPS Navigator v5.5 for the T-Mobile myTouch 3G comes with a number of features that transform the phone into a personal navigation device, complete with onscreen and spoken turn-by-turn directions. Other features include the ability to pre-plan routes online and send addresses directly to your phone, real-time traffic information with one-button rerouting, support for both portrait and landscape modes and voice destination entry.
So, now that you know what’s up for grabs, here’s today’s question. The first person to comment on this post with the correct answer to the following question will win the prize.
- In the video demo included with Mary Beth’s post from Monday, what was the street address I entered by voice to head back to the TeleNav offices?
Win TeleNav GPS Navigator Subscriptions from a Number of Web Sites
As many of our readers know, we occasionally run contests on the TeleNav blog giving away free subscriptions to TeleNav GPS Navigator (or one of the navigation applications from our carrier partners AT&T and Sprint). While this is one of our favorite things to do on the blog and we’ll certainly have contests in the future, this isn’t the only place you can get your hands on a free subscription. We often work with other Web sites to hold contests for their readers, so today we thought we would share a few of the contests that are currently running on these sites so you can enter to win one of our turn-by-turn navigation applications for your phone. Enter to win at any of the below:
![[del.icio.us]](/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/delicious.png)
![[Digg]](/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/digg.png)
![[Facebook]](/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/facebook.png)
![[Google]](/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/google.png)
![[MySpace]](/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/myspace.png)
![[Newsvine]](/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/newsvine.png)
![[Reddit]](/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/reddit.png)
![[Slashdot]](/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/slashdot.png)
![[StumbleUpon]](/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/stumbleupon.png)
![[Technorati]](/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/technorati.png)
![[Twitter]](/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/twitter.png)
![[Windows Live]](/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/windowslive.png)
![[Yahoo!]](/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/yahoo.png)
By RSS
By Email
![[Furl]](/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/furl.png)
![[Email]](/blog/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/email.png)
