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Nokia Drive, now at version 2.0 and now supports offline directions. You can save data directly to the device and navigate without a connection. Data includes posted speed limits and an option to warn you if you are exceeding them.
Under the name of Nokia Maps Suite we have, in fact, packaged a series of tools that will help you experience adventures everyday: Nokia Maps, Nokia Drive and Nokia Public Transport are just the beginning. You are going to love all the apps included in the newest release of Nokia Maps Suite. Just point your browser to Nokia Beta Labs to download it now.
My sense is this a two fold effort: first to continue to rebrand mapping from NAVTEQ to Nokia Maps and second to collect what seem to be dozens of LBS apps into a single suite.
[Waze is] introducing a hands-free way to activate and file reports with the iOS version of the software.
Waze, impatiently waiting for Apple to open up its Siri APIs to developers, has taken the unusual approach of using the iPhone's proximity sensor to activate a voice-controlled interface in its application. A simple wave of the hand will initiate voice-control, allowing drivers to quickly navigate, report traffic, and alert others to road hazards. The app uses Apple's native Siri speech recognition for addresses and local search queries, and will also disable text input while the car is in motion. Unlike Apple's Siri voice control, there's no reason a driver needs to touch the screen or push a button to interact with Waze.
Foursquare last week announced something new: a way to search for venues "where you are not." This is something Yelp and Google do not yet have.
MomentFeed. Inc., the first location-based marketing platform for the enterprise and a leader in the SoLoMo space, today announced a partnership with foursquare to claim venues on behalf of its clients, providing an interface to efficiently manage hundreds or thousands of locations.
Weather Underground, the world's first online weather service, announced today the availability of a time component to its interactive weather map, WunderMap(R), that enables users to go back in time and view weather overlays from historically significant storms such as Hurricane Katrina or last year's Hurricane Irene. The time controls also move the map forward to plot forecasted weather for up to 10 days into the future.
Nokia/NAVTEQ are accused of using Thai map data from Globaltech Ltd without permission. They are asked to pay about $17 million.-
Vlad Savov, at The Verge, argues the latest update of Nokia 3D Maps is not just pretty, but useful.
Nokia's web-based Maps 3D client has grown exponentially more useful today with the introduction of new search, directions, and social sharing options. You can now explore any of 25 cities around the world by items of interest, check out reviews of local businesses where available, and obtain walking or driving directions to any destination within the city limits. Routes can then be shared on Facebook, Twitter, or via the conveniently provided shortened URL, and the same can also be done with any locations on the map. The whole experience is accompanied by grand, sweeping animations that zoom you in and out of locations. Maps 3D was always a very pretty exhibition of the world's most popular cities, but now that it's added legitimate utility to its arsenal, we're only left to wonder when we'll see it as a native app on our Windows Phones.
The Austin Biz Journal reports Gowalla is looking for a buyer. CNN broke the story which points to Groupon and Google as potential buyers.
HipCricket reports that marketers are no longer interested in LBS "games" but in closing sales.
Although marketers and consumers still find value in services that use location parameters for their own sake, they are now more interested in harnessing geographic data to close a sale.
Nokia Research is courting partners and expanding Bluetooth as part of an initiative on indoor location-based services. The company aims to leverage its handset and mapping products to enable a wide range of services including indoor navigation and retail analytics.
