Posts from — October 2008

We have to have a little Friday fun, right? This is really cool. CNN’s John King is using the studio’s Magic Wall to show off some serious Skyhook Wireless GPS real-time locating that is tracking CNN correspondents following the United States presidential race. Not only does it track in real-time, but King displays the previous week’s travel of all the correspondents that results in something like an airline grid. Definitely a cool 2-minute video you should check out before heading out to tonight’s party!

via all points

WebTrends, a company that provides online analytics and marketing solutions, has been tracking the Android platform and found something that may of interest to old media companies.  Yes, the new G1 is surging in popularity and may be the first mobile platform that could challenge Apple’s iPhone, but the UK’s Telegraph Media Group has discovered something of more immediate importance.

The Telegraph Media Group is the publisher of The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph, and manages the popular online news site Telegraph.co.uk.  Now the Telegraph website did something incredibly brilliant and actually developed an Android application, available at Telegraph.co.uk/mobile, that’s been downloaded 5, 000 times and has generated over 31, 000 visits to the newspapers website.

Maybe this is something The Christian Science Monitor should look into.

via pr

Nissan has integrated Google Maps with its Carwings navigation system in Japan and while its only available in the company’s home country for now, it will probably make its way to the United States at some point.  The service will use Google Maps’ car navigation link to allow car owners to send locations found via Google Maps directly to Carlinks which will synchronize the data for in-vehicle use.  Carlinks will also provide Google Maps satellite imagery to improve its mapping experience.

via inside line (Photo Credit: PK Cool)

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a GPS application running on Adobe’s Flash Lite, but Kirk Ballou and a team of developers from Teleca have been working on just that.  The application finds your location using the GPS on a mobile phone, then serves up nearby points of interest.  Right now the Flash Lite GPS app works with the touch interface on certain Windows Mobile phones, including the AT&T Tilt and Moto Q9, with a little back-end work to access your coordinates.  So it is definitely still being refined, but Ballou says that eventually the team wants to add other features to the app including turn-by-turn directions, messaging, and some sort of exercise-related functionality.

via mobile innovation

Consumer Reports has been busy testing 49 of the most popular GPS navigators on the market and has come up with 14 of the best. Not surprisingly, Garmin’s nuvi 880 ranked number one overall “provid(ing) intuitive controls, good guidance, an array of features, and an effective voice-recognition system that lets a user enter an address, choose a point of interest, or change a setting simply by speaking a command. Of course it also costs $600.

If you’re a little more budget conscious, the mag recommends Garmin’s nuvi 255W or 255 as offering up a good combination of value and features.  For the cheapest of the cheap, look at Garmin’s nuvi 200, 250, 270, 200W or TomTom’s ONE 130.

Just keep in mind that while budget models will provide you with reliable basic GPS functionality, you won’t have real-time features, Bluetooth, voice recognition and all the fancy features you’ll find in a model like the Garmin 880.

You can see the entire review guide in the December 2008 issue of Consumer Reports or you can subscribe online.

Recommended GPS Units:

Garmin nuvi 880-$583 at Amazon

Garmin nuvi 255W-$239 at Amazon

Garmin nuvi 255-$187 at Amazon

Garmin nuvi 200-$148 at Amazon

Garmin nuvi 250-$154 at Amazon

Garmin nuvi 270-$158 at Amazon

Garmin nuvi 200W-$175 at Amazon

TomTom ONE 130-$142

via pr

FindWhere, a Virginia-based provider of real-time GPS tracking applications, has just launched its website in Arabic after recently partnering with Dubai-based I2TC.  The two company’s combined have created the leading location-based service provider in the Middle East.

FindWhere has been moving aggressively into the Middle Eastern and North African markets as cellphone penetration has been steadily increasing in the areas.  Their real-time location-based GPS applications can be used to find the location of family members and friends and are used in the enterprise space as well.

Now when FindWhere application users want to log onto the company’s website to find the current location of who or what they’re tracking they’ll be able to comfortably access the required information in native Arabic.

via startuparabia

SiRF Technology Holdings, the chipmaker that supplies GPS chips to the likes of Garmin and TomTom, continues to be a bag of hurt.  Despite managing to cut operating expenses by 22% in the 3rd quarter, SiRF still posted a Q3 loss of $0.11 per share.  The loss did beat Wall Street expectations, but a forecast of weak Q4 results still knocked the company’s stock price down 4% on Wednesday.

While Garmin and TomTom have been hit hard by competitive pressures resulting in dropping PND prices, and a generally weak economy, SiRF has been further hampered by ongoing patent litigation with rival chipmaker Broadcom.  Earlier this month, the United States International Trade Commission decided to review the initial findings of one of its judges that found SiRF infringed upon six of Broadcom’s patents.

While SiRF does expect litigation costs to decrease in the fourth quarter, should the review panel decide to uphold the original infringement findings, it may mean that SiRF will not be able to export the questioned chips into the US without licensing them from Broadcom.  This will of course devastate the company’s margins and with a share price currently sitting at $0.91, could mean huge problems for SiRF.

Maybe it’s not a good time to buy SiRF stock after all.

via reuters

Sharp AQUOS is a name synonymous with high-def LCD TV’s rather than GPS-enabled mobile handsets, but Sharp has moved the respected AQUOS name directly into the mobile landscape with the launch of the FULLTOUCH 931SH. Carried by Softbank in Japan, the 931SH has a 3.8-inch LCD touchscreen display boasting 1024 x 480 pixels that rivals the sharpness of notebook computers. With the narrowing profit margins in the LCD TV display market, I wonder if Sharp can make up the difference by moving AQUOS displays into much smaller form factors.

The touchscreen functionality even goes beyond that of the 3G iPhone; a two finger touch will enable you to zoom in on a website, and the touchscreen is even used to focus the impressive 5.2 megapixel camera, which is further enhanced by an image stabilizer. Being launched in Japan definitely means the 931SH has a 1seg TV tuner, and it does, as well as GPS, HSDPA-based 3G and support for tri-band GSM, a motion sensor, Bluetooth, a magnetic compass independent of the GPS receiver, FeliCa-enabled mobile payments, and all the storage you could possible require through the use of microSDHC cards.

Available in black, red and silver, and pink-tinted gold, the FULLTOUCH 931SH will ship in Japan in late November, but like all the best toys, we probably won’t see this better-than-the-iPhone-3G handset outside of lucky Japan.  Damn.

via electronista

So now that Motorola’s announced its 3rd quarter earnings we have some confirmation regarding the whole Android issue.  Turns out that Motorola won’t be releasing an Android phone in the first half of the year, much less an entire Android line.  However it is true they’ll be focusing on the Android platform and Windows Mobile.  As for Symbian UIQ?  It’ll be cut.  And Motorola’s own P2K platform, also cut.  The company feels it needs to consolidate its mobile handset unit in order to cut costs and hopefully profit, something their $397 million loss in the 3rd quarter is far from.  Oh, and back to the ‘Android not coming in 1H 2009′ thing, it’ll be more like holiday season 2009 before we see a Motorola Android phone.

via moconews

Given Garmin’s struggles in the third quarter, it should be no surprise that TomTom cut shipment forecasts to 18 million PND’s for both North America and Europe, as opposed to its previous forecast of 20 million units for each continent.

TomTom shipped 2.53 million PND products in the third quarter, up year-over-year, but down a huge 18% since last quarter.  However, it was good enough to hold the lead in Europe with a 45% market share, but they’re well behind Garmin in North America with just over 20% of the market.

Sadly, TomTom’s earnings are down 41% this quarter despite a 5% increase in gross margins and surprisingly a 5 euro increase in the average selling price (which is still 26% less than a year ago).  Of course the company’s recent TeleAtlas acquisition obviously left them with a huge debt load, but they are reporting that it’s been renegotiated for a longer term at a slightly higher interest rate.  At least we don’t have to worry about TomTom defaulting on their loan…for now.

via digitimes