Location Based Services Becoming A Reality

from the slowly...-but-surely dept

Now that more and more cars are coming with built in navigation systems, they may no longer be necessary. Lots of companies have been working on building navigation systems for mobile phones, and this review of such a system from Televigation on a Nextel phone suggests that they may be ready for primetime - especially considering the price differential between a $2,000 in-dash system and a $6/month system on your phone. While the in-dash system includes a bigger screen, and potentially more features, the fact that the mobile phone can be used anywhere (such as a rental car) and that all the heavy lifting occurs on a server (where the data is more likely to be up-to-date) may suggest that in-dash navigation systems don't have much of a future. What's more likely, of course, is that via Bluetooth, or some similar technology, such applications on a mobile phone will be connected to the in-dash display (and the vehicle's speakers) to make the overall navigation experience adjust to the situation. As the article suggests, this is only the beginning of location-based services in mobile phones, but by piggy-backing on a service that people understand already, it will make it easier to gain more widespread adoption. After that, additional value added features will start to appear.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 12 Apr 2004 @ 3:04pm

    No Subject Given

    I think a big problem with this setup will be that when you're out of your cell phone coverage area, you have no way to communicate with the server. So far, non-analog cell coverage is way far from universal and, chances are, you'll be left out to dry probably right where you'd need directions the most: when you're out somewhere way out there, trying to find the nearest gas station. Aside from helping you drive through unfamiliar cities, which is definitely great, this system will probably be fairly useless for quite a while.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.