TeleNav brings user-generated content to GPS
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TeleNav has added extra functionality to its latest version, just launched in the US, to allow users to rate restaurants and other businesses, as well as tell everyone how much, and where, they just paid for their petrol.
Version 5.2 should be available in the UK over the summer.
The current version already allows searching for local businesses, but the ability to rate those businesses is new, along with the ability to send someone a text message containing a location, which is automatically picked up by the TeleNav application running on their handset.
Given that Nokia also offers the ability to send locations, some interoperable standard would surely be a good idea.
The extensive use of A-GPS (Assisted GPS) in the US means users are familiar with paying a monthly subscription for their GPS service. A-GPS requires network operator managed servers to work. This income allows software companies such as TeleNav to maintain servers full of user-generated content. European operators have been much slower to implement A-GPS, leading phone manufacturers to implement stand-alone GPS where they've bothered.
The ability to search for petrol stations by price might not be a killer application for everyone, but it is a clear cost-benefit that any user can understand, and could well be the kind of application that drives GPS into every mobile phone in some form or another. ®
COMMENTS
Running before you walk
I am so confused as to why SatNav vendors are not introducing software to allow users to report errors rather than trying to add all these snazzy features that will probably never be used.
I personally couldn't give a toss about all this extra information, but I am very annoyed that my 2007 version of TomTom Navigator has all the road errors of my old version, plus new ones.
One way streets marked as one way the wrong way, streets that don't connect up as they are shown, streets marked as no entry when they aren't really (and vice versa) and so on...
And don't even get me started on the quality of traffic updates - I have not tried one of these yet that is worth it - most cause more problems than they solve, especially around motorways: Because they typically do not collect data for all roads, and they presume any road without data is always totally devoid of traffic, I am often told to leave the M4 to join the A4 because the M4 is travelling @ 49 MPH and I can allegedly do a constant 50MPH on the A4 (They also fail to take into account traffic lights)
Guys... concentrate on improving the basics first!
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