Turn By Turn

You know how they say “What you don’t know can’t hurt you”? Well, it too can be said that what you don’t know can’t help you, either. Such is the case with the tons of helpful features on Networks In Motion’s navigation applications that exist but have yet to be discovered by the masses.

Take, for instance, the “411 Search” feature available on NIM’s VZ Navigator on Verizon Wireless. Did you know you could dial 411 from your phone, talk to a live operator and find whatever you’re looking for, and then get that place’s location and phone number automatically sent to your cell phone’s navigator software? Don’t like typing things into your cell phone? No problem! Just dial 411, and once you’ve found what you’re looking for, say “yes, operator, I would like to get instant driving directions on my cell phone.” Bam! Your call ends, your navigator application starts up and saves the place you just found on 411 into your Recent Places, then jumps into full turn-by-turn spoken directions. With this service, you don’t have to type a single word, and you don’t even have to look at your phone while driving – just talk and listen!

Along this route (no pun intended, really), the latest version of VZ Navigator (version 4.5) gives you another way to speed up the hurdle of having to type things in. This latest version supports voice input, or what techies may refer to as Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR). Just speak the address you want to map or get driving directions to, or speak the name or type of the place you’re looking for, and you’ve already saved yourself some time and effort.

The 411 Search feature is based on NIM’s Place Messaging platform (part of the NAVBuilder platform), which, like text messages, lets a user send a message from a Web site or wireless device to a wireless device. The difference, or upgrade, compared to a text message, is that you’re sending a whole information package about a place, including address, phone number and more. Two main uses of this connectivity feature: trip planning and social networking.

So you’ve decided to brave a National Lampoon’s-style summer vacation in the family wagon across this great country of ours, and you want to use your phone-based navigator to get you to 10 great tourist stops (the last being Wally World, of course)? Log on to your navigator’s Web site (e.g. www.vznavigator.com) and save all 10 places to your Favorites. Then next time you run your navigator on your phone, you “Synchronize,” which means your navigator downloads your updated Favorites list. When you’re ready to roll, just choose which Favorite you want to go to, and the navigator takes it from there. Guaranteed to be easier than what the poor Griswolds went through!

Finally, you could also use Place Messaging to share places with friends and meet there. It’s great for ad-hoc get-togethers, and business owners love this because word-of-mouth advertising is as easy as text messaging… actually easier.

Verizon Hub: home phone connected to live content and mobile phone

As you may recall from my last post, connectivity was one of the earliest visions we had as founders of Networks In Motion. Connectivity refers to the ability to seamlessly transfer information from one platform to another to deliver a convenient universal experience to the user. This week we see the latest advancement in connectivity with the Verizon Hub which includes NIM’s underlying LBS platform.

Imagine this - you’re in your kitchen after a long day and ask the dreaded question: what’s for dinner? So you touch your Hub phone and find the nearest Chinese restaurant. A few touches later you’re following audible turn-by-turn directions on your mobile phone on the way to your tasty dinner.

No, this isn’t some gizmo daydream, but just one of the many “connected” features of the new Hub by Verizon Wireless. The Hub connects your selected content with your cell phone seamlessly – in this case, through the NIM-powered VZ Navigator.

Without having to start your computer or pull out the Yellow Pages, you have just connected to local businesses in your area, complete with driving directions and real-time traffic, all from your home phone. What’s more, you can easily call or revisit the information for this Chinese restaurant directly from your cell phone, wherever you are, using VZ Navigator’s Recent Places and Favorites lists. Not only do you save time up front with the first search, but you save time every other time you reach out to that restaurant.

Verizon Hub connects to VZ Navigator features

Or, how cool is this: you want to catch a movie with some friends, so you use the Hub to find a movie, watch its trailer, buy tickets and send directions to the theater to your phone (again, thanks to connectivity features based on NIM’s Web-to-App API’s). From your phone you could even use VZ Navigator’s Place Messages feature to send the directions, address, and phone number of the theatre to your friends’ cell phones so you can all meet there. It’s easy to think of a dozen more examples of saved time and increased convenience with connected technology like the Hub and VZ Navigator.

In this particular case we see connectivity reaching out from a fixed location to a mobile experience, from a wired device to a wireless device. In an article on Silicon.com the author summarized the connectivity platforms: “The enlightened are talking about the ‘four screens of life’ - the environments that cover pretty much all our always-on moments. When you can’t look at one, you can view another. These constitute your PC, your mobile, your TV and - you guessed it - your car.” I would just add a twist to this definition in that the number of “screens” is variable since new screens are being created and adopted, like the iPhone, and old screens are being combined, like the combinations of mobile and TV, mobile and iPod, and mobile and car.

Even on a single “screen” connectivity can be a challenge. When it comes to varying mobile platforms, for example, there is a challenge in providing mobile to mobile connectivity. Cell phone carrier interoperability across mobile devices for applications and features like driving directions and place messaging is possible if you use a common platform, like NIM’s NAVBuilder platform.

It really all boils down to connectivity platforms. The victor of the platforms war will pave the way for connectivity plays. Sell your connectivity platform and you’ve sold yourself potentially into not one, but multiple businesses. If you’re fortunate and wise enough to land a deal as a connectivity platform developer, then not only have you won business as a provider of platform services (probably paid by third-party application developers or the OEM itself), but you’ve opened the door to winning business as an application provider on all the related platforms. It’s even reminiscent of Microsoft in the old days – win the OS war, and the applications wars are nearly predetermined.

It’s refreshing to know that innovation still has a long way to go to achieve full connectivity across the multiple “screens of life”. With all the permutations of platforms to screens to applications, there is plenty of room to play for platform and application developers alike, but to reach true connectivity, we must master the kindergarten rule: play well with others.