It's nearly here, or so says Planet 9, the well-known creator of 3D city models. RayGun is GPS navigation and social networking application, now in 2D and soon to be in 3D.

With RayGun, you can create an avatar to represent yourself, and move around in the application. You can also share routes, text chat, share photos and video, and even talk to each your friends over VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol).

It won't be a product you can buy; the company hopes to license it phone suppliers and carriers for their products.

- Venture Beat

A jury has found Sprint Nextel infringed on two patents owned by California intellectual property holding company Enovsys LLC. The decision, made Friday, but announced on Monday awarded Enovsys past damages of $2.78 million.

The patents in question relate not to determining position, but rather to a privacy system that protects the location information between user and carrier. The size of the award may have been impacted by testimony that "Sprint Nextel is the market leader in the growing field of location services and saw a 50% increase in related revenues in 2007 over the prior year."

Inventors Mundi Fomukong and Denzil Chesney hold the patents, the first patent was applied for in 1997. Fomukong owns the IP holding company. I suspect as LBS makes and more money, more suits will be filed.

- press release

While Nokia's lead financial executive noted his approval with the EU's approval of the TomTom/Tele Atlas deal, outsiders note that the deals are rather different.

Nokia is looking for revenue from mobile sources and the Internet in contrast to TomTom which for now is a pure play navigation player, says Reuters. While that's true, there's no requirement that TomTom will stay a pure play. All indications seem to be that Nokia's deal will go through and be announced before the August 8 deadline.

- Reuters