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.

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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.

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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 . . .

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Author—Mary Beth Lowell - Communications Manager

There is a fascinating story today in USA Today on traffic technology and a new way that traffic flow will be measured for awhile on I-95 from New Jersey to North Carolina.

According to the article, "the data will be collected from more than 800,000 GPS devices on delivery vans, trucks, taxicabs and other service vehicles; from sensors embedded in the roadways; from toll tag data such as EZ Pass, and from cellphones." Our traffic partner, Inrix, is collecting the data under  contract.

The main benefit, of course, is that drivers are going to have more information available now on traffic flow, congestion and incidents.

With traffic and gas prices the way they are now, it seems that this advance in technology could really help many of us who can, albeit begrudgingly, call ourselves road warriors.

What do you think?

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