TomTom HD Traffic in Czech Republic - is the service entering Central and Eastern Europe?

Yesterday TomTom announced that it will launch TomTom HD Traffic service in Czech Republic. It will enable drivers to take the fastest route to their destination based on the most accurate and real time traffic information. Including Czech Republic TomTom HD Traffic will be available in 23 countries. TomTom claims that with 80 million probes (cellular and GPS) worldwide its HD Traffic service covers 99.9% of the road network, covering traffic jams on main roads as well as secondary and local roads.

Let's hope that this means expansion of HD Traffic service to Central and Eastern Europe (I'm looking forward to welcome this service in Poland :). However the market of retail PNDs is already very saturated in this region, the service is targeted as well to B2B clients with WORKsmart™ fleet management solution. In fact two days ago TomTom won 2011 GreenFleet Awards in IT Innovation category for its 'Eco system', which gives fleet managers the tools to promote and monitor eco-friendly driver behaviour, reduce fuel consumption and carbon emission = decrease costs. The system is actually based on a traffic data, therefore HD Traffic service expansion could mean one step further in the leadership in B2B fleet management solutions as well in this part of Europe. 

source: TomTom 

Google Earth hits 1 billion downloads

"Today, we’ve reached our own one billion mark: Google Earth has been downloaded more than one billion times since it was first introduced in 2005." - we can read on Google Earth blog. It's undeniable that Google changed the face of modern cartography and GIS. 6 years ago it was not that obvious but right now there are few who wouldn't agree with it. The way how people became concious about the spatial aspect of life is reflected in number of geo-visualization (geoviz) web services like Geocommons or ArcGIS online but as well in ingratiation of mapping GIS solutions in many ERPs and other business IT products.

Google Earth is not only very impressive but also very practical. With KML (Keyhole Markup Language) every computer geek in the world is able to produce content, add and analyse geographic data in a fairly easy way. (check this link).

"We’re proud of our one billion milestone, but we’re even more amazed at the way people have used Google Earth to explore the world," wrote Google Earth and Maps vice president of engineering, Brian McClendon, on Google's blog.

At Google's new OneWorldManyStories website, the company has collected stories from people worldwide about how they have used Google Earth "to follow their dreams, discover new and distant places, or make the world a better place," McClendon said.

source: Google blog

TomTom - Go Live 1535M - Social media in your satnav - is it really needed?

Announced on  Aug 29th 2011, TomTom's Go Live 1535M now expands to Canada.This model offers you dashboard tweeting and access to Yelp's recommendations. There are several useful things in there: first of all HD Traffic that is already working in 22 countries and users love it. There are Fuel Prices that help you to locate the lowest priced fuel on your route or in your area. There is Trip Advisor and Expedia to help you find and book a hotel, finally there is even a Google Local Search. 

Is it really needed?

There is one major question that comes to my mind when I look at this functionality: 


Why the hell would I use twitter and yelp while driving a car? 

When I want to use apps like this I stop my car and use my smartphone. But... there are couple of answers to that question:

• First of all, primo, you often go somewhere with passengers, so they might use it...
• Second of all, who is TomTom's target customer group for this product? According to the latest 2011 PEW Report 35% of adult Americans own a smartphone and according to Nielsen 74.6% of users of Android and I guess similar number of users of iPhones uses Google Maps (not counting in other navigation products) to get from place to place. This is clearly not a target customer group to TomTom but the rest of 65% of adult Americans are (!!!) and for them access to services like Yelp might be really useful.
• Finally it's quite an innovative product within the Personal Navigation Devices market, isn't it? TomTom known as the leader of the industry is proving its strength. They are as well getting some know-how in such a LBS solutions and probably soon you'll be able to share with friends on Facebook in a that you are stuck in a traffic jam while going to them, without being accused of lying.  

Who knos, maybe soon similar solutions will be available in build-in car navigation systems. But there is one problem Go Live 1535M is using GPRS connections to get data from the internet and it is already being phased out in some parts of US. The idea is cool. Let's hope that it's going to evolve in the right direction.

source: TomTom

New Pew Report - 28% of American adults use mobile and social location-based services.

According to the report published by Pwe Research Center on the 6th of September 2011 28% of American adults use mobile and social location-based services. That number includes all kinds of using location information on the mobile phone including getting directions or recommendations based on location of the user. That result is not surprising knowing that according to the Nielsen in the study made in July 2011 74.6% of Android users have opened the Google Maps app on their smartphone during last month.  What needs to be commented is that in 2011 only 4% of all adults use geosocial services like Foursquare or Gowalla. This means that the number hasn't change from a similar study made by Pew in 2010. Growth of those services might be driven mostly by non-american users. Geo-social services are growing extremely fast especially in Asia.

What is interesting are demographic changes. In August/September 2010 6% of men used geosocial services, while only 3% on women shared their location with others. In 2011 the gender difference is only 1%. Does it mean that women started to be less afraid of publishing their location? It seems so. In my opinion the difference comes from the fact that in August 2010 Facebook has launched it's 'Places' which increased popularity and trust to such a services among women during one year period.

Currently due to several scandals the location tracking technology in mobile devices in under constant intense scrutiny but the fact is that the market of is growing and analysts are pretty optimistic about it as well in Europe. From the report it seems that the investors should concentrate on Location Based (Aware) Services that are providing information more than on Location Based Social Networks. We'll see soon where the market will go.

source: Pew Internet

The location-based analytics market in US is set to overcome privacy concerns and grow to reach $9bn in value by 2016

According to ABI Research - technology market research company - the location-based analytics market in US will reach the $9bn in value by 2016. Currently due to several scandals the location tracking technology in mobile devices in under constant intense scrutiny but ABI but reckons this will not get in the way of the market blossoming in the future.

According to senior analyst Patrick Connolly this temporary debate will not prevent the future success of location-based services, marketing and advertising, all of which will be based on location analytics – the aggregation and analysis of location information to identify trends that will enable new services and more effective advertising.

The firm said that the “real power” of location-based services will come from a combination of analytics and advertising, when consumers can be anonymously targeted through social, geographic, physical and emotional indicators. While the location analytics market is relatively new, it has been evolving for a number of years and has been the major driver for recent location-related acquisitions by the likes of Apple, Google, Nokia, Facebook and Microsoft. Eventually, location will become commoditised and will be treated as just another piece of demographic information. Consequently, location analytics will become the core provider of value in location-based advertising.

source: research-live.com

BBC - The Beauty of Maps

Just couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about The Art of Geographic Data. It seems that BBC thought about it before me and made whole TV series about related topic...

The BBC documentary The Beauty of Maps is a fantastic TV series looking at maps in incredible detail to highlight their artistic attributions and reveal the stories that they tell. The British Museum in London is a home of staggering 4.5 million maps, most of which remain hidden away in its colossal basement. The programme delves behind the scenes to explore some amazing treasures in more detail. However apart from TV Show their is an BBC website complementing the series on-line.

The website gives us a chance to experience and explore five of the world's most beautiful old maps and discover their secrets starting with Psalter Map from 1260. But it as well presents  how we map virtual spaces and understand our world today. Click of the image to explore this website: 

I found couple of episodes of the series on You Tube:



source: BBC

Location Based Services - a little bit of theory

Fig.1.  Location Based Services

In this post I'm summing up a little bit of theory about Location Based Services (LBS) that I will use for my further academic research. In some papers, books and blog posts it is possible to see different terms interchangeably used to describe the same service: location-aware services, location-related services or location services. Nonetheless the term Location Based Services has been already used and acclaimed by most scientific and professional communities.

Location based services - definitions.


Although LBS is a fairly new domain of science one can find several definitions:

"LBSs are information services accessible with mobile devices through the mobile network and utilizing the ability to make use of the location of the mobile device." [1]


"Location-based Services are IT services for providing information that has been created, compiled, selected, or filtered taking into consideration the current locations of the users or those of other persons or mobile objects."[2]

So basically LBS are using potential and capabilities of modern mobile devices, positioning technologies and mobile internet to deliver to user value added information or service based on his location. The main value of LBS for users is that they don't have to enter location information manually but its automatically collected (with positioning technologies) and used to generate personalized information. 

 Fig.2. LBS as an intersection of technologies
(Brimicombe 2002).

LBS - intersection of technologies.

LBS is a field that uses achievements of several technologies. Brimicombe in 2002 proposed to present LBS as an intersection of several technologies: Geographical Information Systems (GIS), Internet, and Mobile Devices (or New Information and Communication Technologies). This concept is pretty straightforward and doesn't need much explanation. The crucial observation is that the technology is actually going in those three directions: information (Internet), mobility (Moble Devices), location (GPS, GIS). According to statistics only in the 4Q of 2010 there where 100.9 million units of smartphone sold. And it was the first time in the history that sales of smartphones was higher than PCs [4]. Moreover already 25% of users prefer using smartphones over a computer to browse the World Wide Web and the number is growing [5]. Conclusions? Decreasing prices of modern mobile devices are pushing Information Society to go mobile. Now how about location and Geographical Information Systems? People are getting more conscious about the spatial aspect of life. Due to popularity of Google Maps they are already used to certain location-based ideas and their utilization. Maps are in fact one of the first five priorities of Google for the future. Maps are naturally linked with space and for centuries they have been used to find position and to navigate. In the most basic model users where trying to localize themselves on the paper maps and to find their way to targeted place. With the development and release to the public Global Positioning System and first PNDs (Personal Navigation Devices) users started to utilize digital mapping in a mobile way. Therefore it is not a surprise that the most used application on Android and third most used application on iPhone platform is Google Maps. Google recently disclosed that 40% of all Google Map use takes place on mobile phones. There is as well growing number of users of popular Location-Based Social Networks (LBSN). Already well known in USA, LBSNs are gaining popularity in Europe and Asia.

LBS components.


Almost all LBSs are based on components present on the figure 3. All of them create LBS infrastructure and parameters of each of them are crucial for the service to work. Those components are: Service and Content Provider, Mobile Device, Positioning Systems, and Communication Network.   

Fig.3. Basic components of LBS

Service and Content Provider

These are all companies providing service, data and that are responsible for the service request processing. Those providers are for example Location Based Social Networks or GSM operators. 

Mobile Device
These are all non-stationary devices that are tools for the user to request the needed information. For example mobile phones, smartphones, PDAs, tablets, laptops. Those devices can have build-in  or external positioning module (e.g. GPS antena).

Positioning System
Positioning of the user is of course the heart of LBS. The user position can be obtained in several ways. The most common two of them are GPS with a several meters accuracy and the mobile communication network which uses one or more cell towers to determine the position of devices with several hundred meters accuracy. The other possibility is to use the position are WLAN stations - there are companies specialized in capturing information about wi-fi location and using it for positioning. This option is possible only in the cities because of need of high network density but it can give surprisingly good accuracy of several dozen meters. Other topic is indoor navigation which can use as well wi-fi or Bluetooth for determining position inside buildings.

Communication Network

The last component is communication network which is responsible for transferring the user data and service request from the mobile device to the service provider and then the requested information back to the user.

References:

1. Virrantaus, K., Markkula, J., Garmash, A., Terziyan, Y.V., 2001. Developing GIS-Supported LocationBased Services. In:  Proc. of WGIS’2001 – First International Workshop on Web Geographical Information Systems., Kyoto, Japan. , 423–432. 

2. Axel Kupper - "Location-based Services: Fundamentals and Operation", 2005, John Wiley & Sons Ltd,

3. Brimicombe, A. J., 2002. GIS - Where are the frontiers now?. In: Proceedings GIS 2002., Bahrain, 33-45. 
4. http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/08/idc-says-100-9m-smartphones-sold-in-fourth-quarter-pcs-outsold/

5. http://www.tnblive.com/article/jul/2011/one-quarter-smartphone-owners-use-internet-web-surf

Nokia Web OVI Maps optimized for iPhone and Android.

After acquiring Navteq in 2007 Nokia seriously disturbed GPS Navigation industry. With free Nokia maps and its dominance on the market many analysts foreseen the death of the paid navigation. At that time I was working for one of the local European car navigation producers and the management was seriously concerned about the future of the company.  Then Nokia missed smartphone revolution and competitors (including Google Maps) made many improvements to their navigation apps. I always had a feeling that Nokia is not fully utilizing potential of Navteq (acquired for $8.1 billion). Although Navteq is the biggest geographic data producer in the world, Ovi Maps could never successfully force it's way through competition. 

Nokia Ovi Maps - version 3.8

The Nokia Beta Labs has just released version 3.8 of Nokia Ovi Maps. Apart from several improvements in home-screen and functionality the most important information is that Nokia Labs optimized a beta Web version of Nokia Maps for Android and iPhone. You just need to go to: m.maps.ovi.com with your smartphone to access the web app that allows for basic navigation functions like calculating routes and location your position on the map. Currently  “turn by turn” navigation and voice directions are not yet available. 

Competing on iPhone and Android market?

Obviously this functionality is not enough to compete on the smartphone navigation market but it's a good step forward. Nokia has enough resources to create great navigation product for all major platforms. Probably it's contradictory with company's business strategy but as we could observe during last couple of months Nokia's strategy was not very consistent. As I have a sentiment to Nokia (I still think that Nokia 3310 was one of the best phones ever) I would really like to see them disturbing this time smart phones navigation market.

source: Nokia

Nokia 3D World Gaze - hit or kitsch?

Nokia Beta Labs Scientists released new Symbian application  called Nokia 3D World Gaze. It actually looks very cool but it seems to be another gadget app - fancy but not really practical. 

How does it work?   

The application uses compass and GPS from your phone to locate you and direction that you are looking at. Than it gives you possibility to kind of browse the world in this direction by showing data from services such as: panoramio.com, wikinews.org, wikipedia.org, and geonames.org. For example, you are in Münster in Germany and point the phone directly south, you’re likely to see detailed information of Zurich in Switzerland, with the added bonus of being able to see geotagged media in the forms of images. If you're pointing your phone directly downwards, will show you what’s on the other side of the world. 

Useful?

Well... it's another augmented reality app that is rather cool than actually practical. One year ago everyone was talking about Layar and how they’d change the world with their augmented reality application. They didn't. This application is rather fancy gadget to present on even more fancy press conference than a useful tool. But you know what? I like fancy gadgets!!! 

source:  Nokia

TomTom's iPhone App update to version 1.8 with Multi-Stop routes

There was a new update to TomTom's iPhone App released yesterday. Version 1.8 was complement with new Multi-Stop Routes functionality. It means that you can add up-to five extra points to your route without recalculating it, so you can for example pick up friends and visit places of interest more easily – and you only need to plan your route once. 

Many bloggers (including Engadget) wrote that with this update TomTom releases HD Traffic data to iPhone. Dear bloggers TomTom HD Traffic service is available in the AppStore at least from March 2010!!!

After acquiring TeleAtlas - one the world biggest producers of geographic data - TomTom became undeniable leader on the GPS Navigation market. With it's innovative products TomTom's mission "to reduce traffic congestion for all" becomes possible.  

source: TomTom