Getting The Traffic Details From Your Mobile Phone

Mon, Mar 1st 2004 12:12am — Mike Masnick

While navigation technologies have been getting increasingly popular, a number of companies have started offering navigation systems that work on mobile phones. However, just figuring out where you're going is only one part of the puzzle, so along comes a company named ZipDash that is looking to provide you live traffic information on your mobile phone as well. It displays a map with color codings depending on the traffic on certain roads. Right now it's only available in the San Francisco Bay Area, but they expect to roll it out across the country. There are similar companies working on offerings, but ZipDash appears to be one of the first to go live. Their system (of course) requires phones with GPS to tell where the driver is. The traffic info is provided from a variety of sources, including other drivers, but also through deals with taxi, trucking and shuttle fleets.

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Steve Olson, 1 Mar 2004 @ 12:12am

Traffic Data
A Company called Blue Cove Interactive has just released a traffic application, called TrafficMap, that will work with or without GPS. It provides information on commute times between locations as well as color maps and details on congestion points and traffic incidents. The GPS capability of CDMA based cell phones has not been released for commercial use at this time, but when it does get released TrafficMap will take advantage of the GPS in these devices, which measure in the millions right now. TrafficMap was release on US Cellular in March of 2004. It is scheduled to be released on Verizon for 91 municipal areas in April. TrafficMap will be available on a variety of carriers over the next six months. Future products under development include routing, voic`e alerts and instructions, and location based services for restaurants, hotels, gas stations, etc.
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