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.

In AtlasBook Version 4, NIM adds traffic information as a valuable part of its navigation and mapping features, giving users easy access to useful traffic information such as upcoming traffic incidents and congestion spots, as well as expected traffic flow and travel delay. This gives you a good estimate of travel time so you know when to leave and about when you’ll arrive. Traffic information also gives you opportunities to reroute around potentially high-traffic pockets.

Working with traffic data providers, NIM was able to make use of historical and real-time traffic data to make these features work. But, as is NIM’s custom, the question was asked, how could we make this traffic feature better, more accurate, more timely? The more accurate your traffic information, the more you can trust your navigator’s routes and estimated time of arrival. And as a navigation provider, NIM’s business is all about building that trust with its users.

So, in answer to the question of how NIM can improve the usefulness of traffic data, NIM made a bold technology move and acquired TrafficGauge, a leading provider of real-time traffic information. The idea behind this acquisition is not only to add valuable technology to NIM’s NAVBuilder navigation platform and add expertise to NIM’s technology team but to raise the bar of traffic data.

What’s the matter with traffic data? Well, today’s real-time traffic data relies upon traffic sensors that are embedded into major roads in major cities. The catch is in the accuracy of the traffic sensors and their coverage. Sensors could be damaged or missing from the roads of interest to a user. To account for this, historical data is used to supplement this data in order to provide nationwide coverage.

Traffic data of the not-so-distant-future, on the other hand, will rely more heavily on traffic probes, which refers to the anonymous data aggregation of actual users’ location, speed and direction of travel. This would ideally cover all roads at all times. The catch with traffic probes is that the accuracy is directly related to the number of traffic probes. That’s where NIM comes in.

Given that NIM’s AtlasBook platform continuously services the largest number of navigation sessions in the United States with the largest user base, NIM’s NAVBuilder platform is uniquely poised for using this information to create a real-time, accurate database of traffic congestion and flow nationwide, including cities and roads that would not typically have installed sensors. In the next generation of NIM’s innovative Traffic Sharing System, every driver using NIM’s navigation service will help generate “traffic sharing” information, which will result in improved traffic accuracy.

With this traffic technology, the accuracy of traffic data is in the driver’s hands, literally.

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.

Networks In Motion’s path began eight years ago with a vision my husband and I had as we drove around in L.A. traffic one weekday afternoon. The time was early fall of 2000. My husband, Michael, and I had been working together for years at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a NASA facility run by CalTech, in the Satellite Communications R & D group. We worked on cool stuff like wireless communication, video imaging, ASIC programming, RF hardware design, digital encoding/decoding software and more.

We loved our jobs but knew that we wanted to do more, to control our own destiny – and, given that we were prone to working 80+ hour weeks anyways, we thought it’s now or never to start something new. Although we were told we were crazy to both leave our jobs, we set off to make a new life for ourselves.

Believe it or not, when we left, we had no idea what our new business would be. The first month was spent brainstorming, networking, feeling out business approaches. Around this time the FCC had released the E911 mandate, which required that all cell phone operators be able to locate cell phones when dialing 911. That was clue #1.

Then we learned that the GPS Selective Availability (SA) filter, which, for security measures, reduced the accuracy of GPS available to the general public, was recently turned off, thereby allowing for more accurate GPS location capability. That was clue #2.We added the assumption that cell phones would become cheaper and smaller and that everyone would end up owning at least one eventually. We also added the assumption that GPS chips would become cheaper and smaller and lower power, and that cell phone makers would see this path intersect with the E911 mandate and end up making and selling GPS-enabled cell phones. That was big clue #3. So, to borrow a Blue’s Clues token, we sat in our thinking chairs to think, think, think. And what we came up with was that someone needed to make GPS a benefit to everyone’s lives – and it was there we found our calling.

So as we drove through L.A. traffic one hot afternoon, we looked around at all the drivers on the highway in their cars, maybe not knowing where they were going, how they were getting there or when, or what was ahead of them. We thought, wouldn’t it be great to know all these things? If not for finding a better way to get to their destination or being prepared, at least they could have peace of mind. And wouldn’t people be willing to pay for this?

We were convinced absolutely. We thought, if we could help create or drive this non-existent industry that was to become LBS, we would leave our mark in history. We pictured our vision of success: every driver on the road with a location-enabled phone, a location-enabled computer at their desk or home and a location-enabled car, all synchronized to a person’s life, knowing their next appointment, notifying them when they have to leave, telling them how to get there, seamlessly transferring this knowledge from computer to cell phone to car, and having this constantly available personalized assistant conveniently in the palm of your hand.

What we envisioned that day eight years ago has yet to be fully realized, but we are getting closer, and the world has changed so much, I don’t doubt that we’ll meet that day soon. And I fully suspect that NIM will be at the center of that journey.