NaviGadget

Digital map and dynamic content provider Tele Atlas have just announced Tele Atlas HD Traffic.

Tele Atlas HD Traffic contains up-to-the-minute traffic information from multiple data sources which includes GPS readings from personal navigation devices, mobile phone signals, and road sensors. Tele Atlas HD Traffic takes all this data to provide – in real time – latest traffic conditions.

Some of the features Tele Atlas HD Traffic can be delivered to any connected, mobile device and features:

• Delivery of “live” congestion information
• Extremely accurate positioning of traffic jams
• High update frequency, with fresh data delivered every three minutes
• Road speeds, length and location data to deliver the complete picture of the traffic congestion
• Content based on a proven approach to collecting, processing and distributing real-time traffic data

read »

The term “indoor GPS” is completely inaccurate. It really should say “indoor positioning”. There are two similar projects going on regarding indoor positioning: One of them uses angle of arrival (AOA) for calculation whereas the other uses WiFi positioning.

The Angle of Arrival concept was demonstrated at CommunicaAsia at Singapore Expo. It utilizes UWB (ultra-wideband) localization which can provide accuracy of up to 10cm.

The other indoor positioning experiment is being done by Nokia at a shopping center in Helsinki where they rely on triangulation using WiFi signals on their fancy Nokia S60 phones. The phone needs to run an application that can show where you are on the mall directory map.

engadget and cnet

SiRF just announced a new platform called SiRFatlasIV; a multifunction chip that is a GPS receiver as well as a multimedia processor.

The chip is targeting navigation and location-aware products, and provides high performance location engine and twice the memory bandwidth of current entry-level systems.

Nothing for the end consumer here; but you can rest assured that the components in your GPS navigation system are getting cheaper.

According to some sources the acquisition one of our favorite failed brand – Dash – is confirmed. Dash, which gave up manufacturing their hardware and started to focus on location based services as well as crowd sourced and crowd favorite real real-time traffic updates is now a part of RIM (research in motion).

If that’s the case you can expect to see some improvement in the GPS navigation and related services offered by RIM. If you remember the idea behind Dash Express and the platform it had built looked pretty solid but it all failed when they wanted to charge a monthly fee for their service.

We’ll have to wait and see what RIM does with their latest acquisition… read »

Belkin has a new iPhone accessory out, specially designed for iPhone 3.0 OS. It is called TuneCast Auto Live and it comes with an iPhone app called ClearScan Live. When used together it lets iPhone and iPod Touch owners operate their FM transmitter and find the best radio frequency to play music in the car.

With the help of the app you can operate the whole thing from your iPhone, including saving presets and changing frequencies.

It will be available in early fall in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia for about $80.

The good news is that it also works with iPod classic and Nano.

Here is a neat idea. This simple thing; priced at $15 – just sits in your cup holder and has a smooth surface that your regular windshield mount can hold on to. If for some reason you don’t want your GPS navigation system on your windshield, or think this may help decrease the chance someone breaking into your vehicle; or have way too many cupholders; we say “Why not! Go for it”.

Another bonus is that it keeps some of the charger cables out of sight. You can pick one up right here… read »

Let’s say you’re traveling at warp speeds and you need to avoid hitting any kind of mass along your path? How do you navigate and know where you are? Can you rely on our flimsy earth-made global positioning satellites that are in danger of failing within the next couple of years? Nope, you sure can’t.

Then what you’ll need is something similar. Instead of listening to signals from these satellites you look for pulsars that emit regular radio signals; just like our satellites.

That’s what Bertolomé Coll at the Observatoire de Paris in France found: Four pulsars within our galaxy (specifically: 0751+1807 (3.5ms), 2322+2057 (4.8ms), 0711-6830 (5.5ms) and 1518+0205B (7.9ms)) that form a tetrahedron around our solar system that can help us locate the position of any point down to a meter. You may call it an interstellar GPS system.

Why four pulsars? Coll points out that on these scales relativity has to be taken into account when processing the signals and to do this, the protocol has to specify a position in space-time, which requires four signals.

Coll then defines the origin for this system of co-ordinates as 00:00 on 1 January 2001 at the focal point of the Interplanetary Scintillation Array, the radio telescope near Cambridge in the UK that first observed pulsars.

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Just like any other news story this one has really just one source – and everyone else is just blowing it out of proportion. We thought we’d dig around a bit and see what’s up.

So here are some quotes from Government Accountability Office report (pdf):

If the Air Force does not meet its schedule goals for development of GPS IIIA satellites, there will be an increased likelihood that in 2010, as old satellites begin to fail, the overall GPS constellation will fall below the number of satellites required to provide the level of GPS service that the U.S. government commits to.

Because there are currently 31 operational GPS satellites of various blocks, the near-term probability of maintaining a constellation of at least 24 operational satellites remains well above 95 percent. However, DOD predicts that over the next several years many of the older satellites in the constellation will reach the end of their operational life faster than they will be replenished, and that the constellation will, in all likelihood, decrease in size.

And here is the final recommendation from the report:

Recommendation: Because of the criticality of the GPS system and potential delays, and given the importance of GPS to the civil community, the Secretary of Defense should appoint a single authority to oversee the development of the GPS system, including DOD space, ground control, and user equipment assets, to ensure that the program is well executed and resourced and that potential disruptions are minimized. The appointee should have authority to ensure DOD space, ground control, and user equipment are synchronized to the maximum extent practicable; and coordinate with the existing positioning, navigation, and timing infrastructure to assess and minimize potential service disruptions should the satellite constellation decrease in size for an extended period of time.

Somewhere in the report it even mentions that the military may see decrease in accuracy of GPS guided missiles – requiring the military forces to use bigger bombs or more bombs to hit the same target. Sad to see the report is not concerned about loss of civilians lives because of dumbing down “smart” bombs.

So yeah, we’re doomed. Nobody was blowing it out of proportion :)

You’ve probably already seen many images of the Google Street View Car, or similar Navteq vehicles but probably never a tricycle with Google equipment on top. Let’s just call this the Google Trike from now on. It is now going to map streets of UK – specially narrow ones, and places where motor vehicles are not allowed – starting with historical landmarks that public voted to the top. Google Trike weighs about 250 lbs and allows for 360 degrees images to be taken with the on board cameras and processed with the on board image software. It is currently being tested somewhere else in Europe – namely Genoa – and will arrive in Britain this summer.

For those piracy crazy Brits – the software will be blurring those license plates and faces so they can focus on worrying about their own government’s surveillance cameras and not Google.

via

This GPS helmet manufactured by Japanese NEC is called U-met. Not only GPS, but the helmet also incorporates a camera, and a microphone to communicate with a base station over 3G networks. We had actually talked about this GPS helmet back in July 07 but there are a few differences now, such as the front warning lights and the communication headset.

Anyways, the device is designed for security personnel, rescue workers, and fire fighters. It is very unlikely that you’ll actually get your hands on this… read »