http://www.twofortyfouram.com/

http://www.androidforums.com/market/tools--utilities-9/local...

(What's up with the bright idea of "need to view Android Market on a handset" to see a list, in the main page http://www.android.com/market/ ? Perhaps also install iTunes, eh ;-)

P.S. Sorry, the first link is NOT the market page, and it's dated 2008. Can't easily find current price ...

Google maps in the car, everyone uses.

This map, though, looks like it could be part of the iPhone default apps.

I agree on the keeping it simple part though. No need to make everything customizable when you have people that can make things more beautiful than you can. Sure, you can customize your version of van Gogh's Irises, but why bother? :-)

Would you buy a computer that couldn't be customized?

I think Apple's recent acquisition of Placebase, a mapping company, might indicate that they're willing to compete with Google on a navigation app.

Google and Apple have a weird relationship as far as mobile goes. Apple can do really lame shit like blocking Google Voice and Latitude, but when it comes down to it Google will still force a smile and continue working with them because they want all the mobile search revenue.

err, I hope they meant "it's up to the users of those devices to decide whether to install the application."!?

Combine that with the fact that, especially here in little switzerland, the only time you REALLY need a navigation tool is, of course, when you are abroad.

Interesting and a nice addition (as it is free), but no replacement for the traditional solutions.

Does the EU not have some sort of unified cell network? I'd think that'd hurt their competitiveness a lot, if people can't take their cell phones with them when traveling between countries for fear of huge roaming bills.

And. No. The EU does not have a unified cell network. And as long as nobody does it, nobody will start with it as these excessive roaming charges (EUR 10 per MB is common) are a really nice way to make additional money - especially considering that people are moving around more and more.

Google is in the business of bringing their services TO you, this application being one good example.

But like Google Voice and Voicemail, they are also finding ways to completely reinvent industries without locking you in. You don't have to use Google Voice, but boy it's valuable if you do.

I think at some point not to far from now, we're going to see Google Bandwidth or Google Data, which will offer IP-based wireless services for free while wiping out the concept of roaming.

Google makes money on ads through the usage of online services. The pricing structures in the telcos is frequently designed to make usage expensive/difficult.

Google's going to make it easier, again, by cutting the telcos out the equation almost entirely. Their investments in dark fibre and the future investments they'll make off the back of their ad business makes this quite a linear equation as bandwidth becomes cheaper.

Google is going to become the most feared company in the world . . . feared by business, not by users.

But consider the remote possibility that depressing gray reality might set in instead.

Err... yeah, Europe has that issue too. In spades:-)

Also - Like other navs, this solves the problem of 'what hotels are near me'. Unfortunately neither this solution or existing dedicated navs solve the problem of 'what hotels near me have available rooms, and how much do they cost'.

That's a much more useful problem to solve.

Most people spend 90%+ of their time with cell coverage, though. Garmin's going to lose those folks.

http://www.google.com/finance?q=grmn

http://www.google.com/finance?q=TOM2.AS

Unless it does, there's still an enormous scope for the in-car navigation market as driving is one of the scenarios in which you are likely to lose your mobile signal or see it weakened enough to hurt a fully online navigation application.

From here: http://news.cnet.com/8618-30684_3-10384544.html?communityId=...

The droid is rumored to come with a 16gb SD card, which can be replaced with a 32GB card. Pretty sure thats as much, if not more than any standalone GPS device.

That's cool then.

I hope they're caching enough around a route to get you to a petrol station ;) That's generally why I divert and leave the motorways.

Then it got stolen, and when I went to see if there was a new/updated model, there wasn't: garmin have spent the last 5+ years making mass-produced cheaper models for in-car nav.

Seems like a great product, would be fantastic if they port it to iPhone.

I wonder what percentage of app store revenue is the navigation apps? They're not insignificant. They'd be losing a chunk of change approving this.

I suppose they'll lose more chunks of change in "street cred" or something if they don't have it and the Droid does.

If you just DL the tiles for the areas of interest, I'm sure it could be done on a phone. DL'ing the whole US might cause a storage issue for phones though (though I hesitate to say this since many phones now have rather large storage capacity and SD cards, etc.)

EDIT: From the article:

Google Maps Navigation was built from the ground up to take advantage of your phone's Internet connection.

I don't think it's really reasonable, at this point, to expect a GPS device to work worldwide. Are they supposed to store the world's mapping data locally? Google is still licensing their maps from Tele Atlas (TomTom) outside the US so I don't think it's even possible for them to provide navigation in those parts.

The map downloading model you're describing already exists and there are already plenty of other companies providing in-car GPS devices for that. I don't think it's appropriate to implement that sort of thing in a smartphone since the entire point is that it should always be connected.

The app, however, is for Android 2.0, and will likely work on all devices running that -- although there's only one announced atm.

This could be solved by pre-fetching the whole route's data. If Google can tell where people tend to drop service, they might even decide automatically whether pre-fetching is necessary.

They collect a lot of data from mobile Maps users, so I wouldn't be surprised if they'll give it back in form of all kinds of neat automations/optimizations.

Also, Apple recently acquired PlaceBase so they now have access to their own map data.