DASH API’s Part Two

For those not inclined to dig around for yourselves and see what the DASH APIs can do, here is the abbreviated version:

First the APIs currently available are for “Dynamic Search” which is a bit of a misnomer if you ask me. The “Dynamic” mostly just means that the results from the “search” are relevant to your location… so as your location changes so will the subsequent results from the “search” request. The “search” is not really a search as much as a filtering of the data from a single predefined database so as to only show data relevant to your location.

There is a widget type feature that allows a DashApp to be discovered and added directly to a Dash Navigation device directly from any website, rather than having to go through the MyDash service. Sure to be a popular viral marketing feature for app builders.

A limited number of HTML tags are also supported to allow application developers to control some of the look and feel of their data within the Dash device.
While all results are seemingly related to the users’ geographic location, results can be sorted by a variety of values not limited to distance, including by title, time/date, price and rating.

Elements of a response can include details such as title, description, time, phone, lat/long, street address, city, state, zip, distance from the user, price and rating.

It also seems that DASH is rightfully being quite judicious with the amount of data that it lets DashApps use, 5k per query it seems. At that rate I suppose they can allow users a fairly large amount of use, before they really start to eat into that pool of GPRS data.

The initial DashApps made available with the launch of the APIs include straightforward POI lookup services including real estate listing from Coldwell Banker and speed trap data from Trapster. Trapster includes the capability for device owners to report/submit new speed traps directly from their device. The weather service from WeatherBug and the BackTrax applications are less location sensitive but more dynamic. WeatherBug provides up to date weather condition and forecasts in your area, while BackTrax lets users look up the name of the last three songs played on all the radio stations in your area. The final inaugural application is called myFUNABOL calendar which allow you to import electronic calendars from places like outlook into the device.

This is undoubtedly a huge step in the right direction, and is a mere trickle of the types of location aware information I think we can expect to see turn into a tidal wave in the not too distant future. Despite the widely reported problems the Dash devices have in terms of size and poor basic GPS performance, it certainly makes me want to run out plop down my $399, at least until the Nuvifone hits shelves. I certainly hope Garmin has been watching DASH carefully and has been taking notes.

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Nokia Sells a Whole Lotta Phones, Soon a Whole Lotta GPS

Well in case you weren’t already aware, Nokia is quite bullish on LBS these days. A new article out today has Nokia saying that half of the phones it sells will have navigation built in by the 2010 and 2012 timeframe. The company will sell nearly ½ billion phones in 2008 according to estimates and expects 35 million of those to come equipped with GPS (7% of current phone sales). “You will see few N or E series phones without GPS” according to Michael Halbherr, the head of LBS at Nokia. The N series sold 38 million phones and E Series sold 7 million phones last year. The company also expects all phones to have some level of coarse location awareness through either wi-fi or cell tower positioning schemes soon. As you might expect, Nokia seems to see the handset as the center of the LBS universe with storage and processing speed on the handset allowing the phone to provide much of the necessary capabilities for LBS directly rather than being heavily dependent on the phones wireless data connection to off load work to the network, which “overloads the network and degrades the consumer experience” according to Halbherr.

Hmm to throw a GPS chip in 250 million phones at $4 per chip would set them back $1 billion a year, looks like they could just buy the leading GPS manufacturer, SIRF, outright for less than half of that right now!
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GPS in 2008

It’s nearly that time of year for end of year wrap ups and to look ahead to 2008. Stephen Colwell at GPS World published a look ahead to 2008 for mass market GPS that’s worth a read. Some interesting takeaways:
- Nearly 10% of US households now own some sort of navigation device
- Personal Navigation Devices (PNDs) are likely to see even greater growth in 2008, brought on by new entrants and lower prices, although new entrants may need to dangle better deals in front of retailers to gain shelf space.
- Leading PND manufacturers will likely begin to focus on more specific market niches beyond the mass market… areas like aviation, fleet and enterprise solutions. Not that the potential for mass consumer PNDs seem tapped out or anything, but it’s never too early to start thinking about where future growth will come from… after all the existing 100-200% annual growth rates can’t be expected to be sustainable for much longer.
- Integration of LBS into Smartphones will be a major point of focus, as LBS continues to establish itself as a leading way to boost added arpu for carriers. The above mentioned three figure growth rates in PND sales has to be sending up some red flags to mobile carriers that there really is a hot market for handheld navigation solutions.
- Map makers, Tele Atla and Navteq will innovate like its 1999! Errr spend like drunken sailors to introduce crazy cool new functionality around their maps including 3d and aerial imagery… maybe?
- Price competition in GPS chipsets is expected to get serious as new suppliers get into that market and a new breed of very large buyers (such as smartphone makers and potentially camera makers, etc) will be putting in very large orders and could have significant negotiating leverage.

Prognostications aside, here is the stuff I HOPE makes some serious progress in 2008:

- Better mash-ups of location identifying technologies in a single solution. GPS is obviously the leader but by itself leaves a lot to be desired (ie just flat doesn’t work) in urban canyons or indoors. Need to mashup SIRF, Rosum and Skyhook all into one nice easy to implement package.
- Lower power consumption GPS chips. If you play with GPS and navigation much on a cell phone the first thing you may notice is how damn fast the battery drains. Anyone know how I can pick up shares in NemeriX?
- Connected PNDs. Hint: the P is supposed to stand for Personal. Right now it's personal as in personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut, not personal like Facebook or MySpace.
- LBS will no longer be synonymous with navigation. Let’s hope friend finders, locators/trackers, localized search, LBS gaming all make major inroads, so that navigation is no longer 93%+ of LBS revenues.
- NYC comes up with system to tell me how long I’ll have to wait on the subway platform before the next train arrives.
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Need Help... Beer Running Low... Peanuts Too

Wandering though the SATCOM expo here in NYC today and was surprised at how close we are to having the next generation of wireless technology include beaming your call to Aunt Sally up through a satellite directly from the handset in your front pocket. Check out the Terre Star Networks website for more on that.

One LBS solution taking advantage of this today is a company called Spot the Satellite Personal Tracker. The device is about 2 ½ times the size of a Palm Treo and seems designed as a worse case scenario satellite messenger locator product for the outdoor/adventurer market. The device makes use of a combination of GPS to determine location and then satellite communication to communicate back to pre-determined list of recipients.

The device features various buttons from which adventurers can send pre programmed alert to others, including their whereabouts, no matter where they are. A ‘Check In” button lets users locate themselves and send their location to friends and family to let them you know where you’ve been and that you're ok. An “Ask for Help” button is there to send your location to friends and family for more minor non emergency help or assistance, and of course the device has a 9-1-1 alert button to alert search and rescue teams to your whereabouts in case of a dire emergency.

Seems like an invaluable safety tool for those hard core outdoor enthusiasts… once the product becomes available November 1st I’ll be interested to see how well the battery performs and also how customizable those alerts can be.

The system uses Google Maps.

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Garmin Mobile XT: Plug 'N Play Maps for Your Phone

Garmin International Inc., a unit of Garmin Ltd. today announced Garmin Mobile XT, a unique, all-in-one software solution that turns select smartphones with internal GPS into high-end Garmin navigators. This mobile phone software application seamlessly pairs the phone's built-in GPS with Garmin's software so that customers have the benefits of navigation anywhere in North America or Europe. Unlike other mobile phone applications, Garmin Mobile XT offers convenient preloaded maps and includes access to dynamic content like premium real-time traffic alerts and fuel prices, but does not require any monthly fees or subscriptions of any kind.

"Garmin Mobile XT is easy-to-use and affordable, with no monthly charges," said Charles Morse, Garmin's director of mobile and PND marketing. "It's a one-time investment that gives customers full-featured GPS navigation on their smartphone whenever and wherever they need it, including areas outside of wireless network coverage."

Garmin Mobile XT is preloaded on a microSD card (with miniSD and standard SD card converter) that includes Garmin navigation software for the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico, or Europe. Once the card is inserted into a compatible smartphone with embedded GPS, the Garmin Mobile XT application will launch automatically. Customers are then greeted with Garmin's intuitive "Where to?" and "View map" welcome screen. With a few screen or button taps, customers can easily route to a specific street address or choose from millions of points of interest -- such as restaurants, hotels, ATMs, and gas stations. In addition to turn-by-turn, voice prompted directions, users will also see their exact position on a detailed moving map. If a turn is missed along the way, a new route will be recalculated automatically.

Thanks to Garmin's vast product line and ability to leverage technology from the other GPS markets Garmin serves, Garmin Mobile XT builds in unique features such as support for travel guides, topo maps and custom points of interest, as well as advanced features such as route planning with saved routes, custom avoidances and visible trip logs. Garmin Mobile XT users also have the benefit of routing to the location of a contact in their phone's address book or to a calendar appointment (on supported platforms).

Garmin Mobile XT also includes PeerPoints(TM), a powerful feature enabling users to send their position to any other phone as well as view and navigate to the location of other Garmin Mobile XT users. PeerPoints is the perfect way to keep track of friends and family and navigate to them with the touch of a button.

In addition to navigation, Garmin Mobile XT includes free access to Garmin Online(TM) so that customers have useful, constantly-updating information at their fingertips like real-time traffic, fuel prices, hotel prices and weather forecasts. The real-time traffic service from traffic.com identifies accidents, road construction or other incidents affecting traffic, and routes users around the congestion. The fuel price feature displays the filling station's name, fuel price, type of fuel, and distance to the station (U.S. only). Garmin Mobile XT users can also help customers find hotel information, ratings and discounts from hotels.com. Real-time weather information provided by Custom Weather lets users see weather forecasts at their current location or anywhere in the world. Garmin Online is accessed through the phone's wireless data service.

Garmin Mobile XT is available now for a suggested retail price of $99 in the U.S. Garmin Mobile XT products purchased in the U.S. include maps of all North America. In Europe, Garmin Mobile XT includes map data for 30 countries in Europe. Map data is provided by NAVTEQ(TM) -- a world leader in premium-quality mapping.

Visit the Garmin Mobile Buyer's Guide, http://www.garmin.com/mobile, for more information or to purchase Garmin Mobile XT.

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"It's not a Mona Lisa painting. It's a car."

NY cab drivers filed a court case recently about being forced to have GPS locators/monitors in their vehicles - they lost the battle yesterday. It may improve the situation for drivers, especially if the locators/monitors have navigation, traffic, and other LBS services associated with them. Don't be surprised, however, if prices for cab rides go up as a direct result...or if there is a strike and you can't find one on Monday morning.

I like the idea of credit cards for cab rides though - we are rarely a cash-based society anymore.

"A federal judge on Friday refused to block a new city rule that requires taxi drivers to install global positioning systems and credit card machines in their cabs by Monday.

The drivers argue that the city overstepped its authority and acted unconstitutionally when it mandated the units. Their lawsuit also claims GPS will give away trade secrets by disclosing the cabbies' driving patterns, which they say give them a competitive edge.

U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman refused to immediately block the rule from taking effect, saying Friday that the use of the technology to improve taxi service appeared to outweigh drivers' privacy rights in this case. He urged the two sides to negotiate and set the next hearing for Oct. 10.

Malcolm Goldstein, a lawyer for the taxi drivers, said he was reading the judge's ruling and had no immediate comment.

Berman said that on the limited amount of evidence he had viewed so far, it did not appear the drivers would succeed in claims that the city acted improperly, caused them "severe and debilitating economic harm" and prevented them from earning their livelihood.

At an earlier hearing on Wednesday, Berman had expressed skepticism toward the drivers' arguments, saying, "It's not a Mona Lisa painting. It's a car."

After that hearing, dejected driver Beres Ford Simmons said: 'Gentlemen, prepare for another strike.'

Hundreds of drivers idled their cabs for a two-day protest of the GPS technology in early September. More than 13,000 yellow cabs must be equipped with GPS and software that record where the cars are every eight seconds or the drivers could face fines. The group leading that strike called it a "resounding success," while city officials said disruption was minimal."

What about the urban canyon effect for GPS? Will it really be able to pinpoint where they are every 8 seconds?

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070928/ap_on_re_us/taxi_technology

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Former CEO of Centrality Insights Video

Very interesting interview from the former CEO of Centrality with regards to the recent acquisition of Centrality by SIRF from GPS Business News. He describes the concept of system on a chip (SOC) in layman terms and why he thinks that SIRF has a nice lead there with three full generations of products behind it, relative to more new-comers to the space. Also why he thinks that hardware solutions like theirs have and likely always will have better performance than software based solution for many applications, not that SIRF won’t have a software solution itself just in case. He also sees the connected PND as one of the major developments in the navigation space in the next few years.
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NYC Taxi Assoc. Sues Over GPS, Exhibit 1: Proprietary Driving Routes

In case you missed it, there was a taxi strike about two weeks ago over the required use of GPS enabled devices in NYC taxis. Well the same folks that led the strike, The NYC Taxi Workers Alliance, is now bringing a lawsuit over the issue and they're arguing among other things that the driving patterns their drivers use is proprietary and that use of a GPS tracking system will "give away" these patterns.

Hmm, well this is rational, if I knew a really good short cut around town, I wouldn't want to share that short cut with the world because then it wouldn't really be a short cut much longer.... but my guess is that the bigger risk is that it will uncover a systematic pattern of slightly more "scenic" routes and routes that keep the taxi and its meter rolling irregardless of the time it takes to get to the destination.
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LBS Mini Company Profile: TAO City Guides

TAO City Guides is a Paris based company offering location aware tour guides of the city via hand-held PDA type devices. Tourists can rent and return the GPS enabled devices at one of many popular city hotels or via the company’s own Paris based store, with a 200 euro deposit. Rental arrangements can also be made through the taocityguide.com website and are typically priced at ~10-15 euro per day.

The guides can help tourists navigate between various hand picked points of interest around the city, find nearby restaurants and stores, and read about or hear audio tour information on major points of interest throughout the city. TAO City claims that the devices are loaded with the equivalent of four guidebooks worth of information.

As a nice added feature the devices also contains bi lingual dictionaries, food vocabulary and phrase finder features to help their English, Japanese and Spanish speaking visitors more easily communicate in French.

It sounds like recent visitors to Paris have found the devices being offered on a special 1 euro per day, which would seem to indicate the TAO is trying to either spark demand or is potentially moving to an ad sponsorship model where advertising businesses within the device is supplementing rental income.

The use of un assisted GPS technology likely presents some user experience challenges for customers trying to plan itineraries and get their bearings from within their hotel or their next stop from within the Louvre for example. Also, the long time to first fix may be challenging in more urban sections of Paris, but standing on a street corner waiting for a signal fix, still beats pulling out that 40 panel folding map, and spending 20 minutes trying to figure out how to fold it back up. According to the company, battery life is limited to 3-4 hours, depending on the level of use.

Despite some of the potential shortcomings, these type of services could have huge potential. They will not only allow visitors a new found sense of confidence in exploring a new city without concern of getting lost, but also eliminating the often times embarrassing need to ask for direction from locals who may not be very understanding of non French speaking visitors.

The Calabash World Explorer offers a similar service for travelers visiting the US Virgin Islands, and from the number of tourist I see each day wandering haplessly through mid town Manhattan, a NYC service with its 40 million annual visitors could be a huge hit.

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AnyTrack Multi Purpose Tracker

AnyTrack, a subsidiary of AnyData, a wireless data solutions provider, just announced the availability of its cellular enhanced multi-purpose GPS tracking product for business and consumers. The GPS-100 device won a CTIA wireless E-Tech award for its innovative design which including its small size (2.36” x 1.85” x 0.8) and light weight (2.65 ounces). The devices operate on the Sprint network and data use plans ranging from $19.95 a month to $129 per year depending on your expected level of use. The GPS-100 device is marketed as a multi purpose tracker for anything and everything including pets, people packages and vehicles. Customers can log into the secure anytrack.net system at any time to locate the device.
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Holding out hope for LBS on my first-gen iPhone...

These days I find myself missing my GPS-enabled services from Verizon Wireless. Back in late June, I played into the hype, throwing my Samsung u740 to the side for the iPhone. I loved having this location-aware device always sitting right by my side, helping me find my nearest Starbucks or getting me back on track when lost in a new city. Now with AT&T, I am treated to hundred-page bills and the need to know where I am when I want to find things around me, given the widely-publicized omission of GPS from the gadget of the century.

However I still hold out a glimmer of hope that LBS will come to my first generation iPhone - with companies like Skyhook Wireless taking an alternative approach to offering location-based services through Wi-Fi. Skyhook has gone to great strides to map out the location of public and private Wi-Fi networks across the United States and enables websites to offer location-aware services through its technology and database. Back in May, Skyhook announced support of its technology in Mac OS X. Since the iPhone runs a version of Mac OS X and contains built-in Wi-FI, could we see Skyhook-powered Wi-Fi location-based services running on the iPhone in the future?? I hope so...
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Global Trek Xploration Corporation develops "GPS Footwear” to track loved ones.

These GTX GPS Xplorer Smart Shoes will let you keep track of your children, novice marathoners or your scavenger hunt team, wherever they roam.

The Xplorer Smart Shoe allows you locate the wearer of the shoes. Like many GPS locator devices, you are able to define a "safe" zone that sends an alert when the boundary line is crossed. For example, you can create a safe zone around a school or neighborhood where you feel safe for your children. When the child wanders outside of the safe zone, an SMS alert will be sent to your phone. This finder device allows for piece of mind while minimizing the risk of the device being lost. These shoes can stay charged for several days for an extended feeling of security.

For more info, go to: http://www.gtxcorp.com/

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Dual Source GPS Chipsets

Looks like folks are increasingly dual sourcing GPS chipsets these days, which can only mean bad things for the crazy 90% market share that SIRF currently enjoys. SIRF took one on the chin yesterday as STMicroelectronics announced that they were ramping up their own production for a deal with Garmin (ST also provides fab services for fabless SIRF by the way). Looks like that may have had something to do with ST’s readiness for Galileo in Europe and maybe something to do with superior Time To First Fix? SIRF seems to be busy away at trying to integrate more and more features on a single chipset, like navigation, entertainment, etc to fight off competitors and commoditization. Think the rationale goes something like this… “sure we can sell you a plain vanilla GPS chip, but we know you’re going to want to add navigation and other features to the device anyway, so why not buy this all in one fancy system on a chip for just three dollars more and it will save you a ton of hassles and get you to market more quickly.”
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Voice and GPS: Peanut Butter and Jelly

Voice-enabled GPS services becoming mainstream as big GPS manufacturers and mapping software firms integrating voice into their consumer products...

http://cp.gpsworld.com/gpscp/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=451017
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In light of TomTom's recent acquisition of TeleAtlas, the obvious question on everyone's mind is... what about NavTeq. There is a good post over on Seeking Alpha with some speculation on what may be in store for them and the potential winners and losers.
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