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.