INRIX and ALK Technologies, announced that INRIX will power real-time traffic data in ALK Technologies popular CoPilot® Live™ v8 GPS navigation app for Apple iPhone, Google Android and Windows phones in North America. CoPilot is one of the Top Grossing Apps at the iTunes App store in the US at the pretty amazing price of $35.
This release also represents a milestone in that it will be powered by the in application purchase ability - allowing you to buy the App, then add-on the traffic option from within the application itself. The price for traffic service is $19.99 a year at the Co-Pilot site, and I would imagine that would also apply for in-app purchases. That's pretty cheap for some best in class traffic coverage and capabilities.
More on the news release below after the jump.
More info at ALK - Co-Pilot and Inrix
Google Navigation - Free Mobile Phone Navigation App
In what could be a death blow to those $50+ mobile phone navigation applications, the NYT reported that Google is launching a turn by turn navigation application for free. Google plans on launching the application to mobile phones with an ad supported model. The convenience of the application that may be pre-loaded onto smart phones could make the millions of smart phone users owners of a pretty solid mobile navigation application. Recently I reviewed the TomTom application for the iPhone and thought that the overall user experience was pretty good on my iPhone. The convenience of having the application in your pocket, ready to go at any time is pretty good. I firmly believe that free and already on my phone can beat $150 stand alone GPS and in my other car. Granted not everyone has a smart phone right now, but many do.
Gauging from the fact that Google is creating their own maps, and that their traffic data is pretty impressive in the road coverage, Google may in fact be prepping an impressive offering. Google is offering the beta application for Android phones already. With the application, you can give the device voice commands, and see the route in satellite view - viewing the road ahead with a satellite picture of the world around you. With the Street View option, you can get a look at the street ahead, what lane to be in and the view of your building when you arrive. Pretty amazing. We'll see if the package really delivers the user experience that they promise.
iPhone Navigation Apps - Top Grossing Apps in the iTunes Store
Among the Top Grossing Apps at the iTunes store are games, utilities and three Navigations Apps for your iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS.
#3 - Navigon for North America- They were a first mover and are not pretty high on the list coming in at $89. They continue to add features and are readying a subscription traffic feature for the software later this year.
#7 - Motion X GPS Drive - The low cost solution delivers a navigation solution that needs to be connected to pull down the map set. Other solutions include the maps in the download, while this solution pulls them down live over the air. Lose your connection and lose the ability to pull down new maps. Priced at $2.99 makes it pretty popular to be able to hit the 10 grossing applications
#33 - TomTom North America - This application offers a lot of capability but not all of the capabilities that one might find in a higher end unit. Very solid navigation from this App - Read my full review of the TomTom App that I posted earlier this week. Available for $99.
#90 - Co-Pilot Live - at $35 this is a pretty amazing price for the features - they are delivering monthly Highway map updates to you for this price. Quarterly updates to North America helps keep the rest of the roads up to date.
The TomTom App for the iPhone was one of the early Apps for the iPhone from a major GPS manufacturer and easily emulates their standalone models in functionality and quality. Navigating with the iPhone has been an unmet promise since the iPhone launched with its teaser GPS capability, which until its update this summer would not allow turn by turn direction Apps on the device.
TomTom's iPhone App is a straight forward navigator, not really utilizing the extensive connectivity to perform back flips in the navigation world, but instead elects to put its energy into making a high quality experience for users in a simple interface. This sometimes limiting simplicity offers entry level capabilities in a trustworthy wrapper that I think is surprisingly good. What I cannot capture properly in words is the simple convenience of having a capable navigation device in your pocket wherever you go. There is no wondering if you left your GPS in the other car, no wondering if you left it at home while on a business trip (happened to me recently and it was a miserable experience - tried to navigate with built in Google maps while someone else drove; never again), and no wondering if you will get to your destination; your GPS is already in your pocket.
NDrive launched their iPhone application today for most of Europe and Canada; no word on a US launch. The application takes a few nice steps to add other features: 3-D buildings where available, integration with iPod for listening to iPod while navigating, the use of gesture control to zoom and pan - a nice natural addition that iPhone users are use to.
Key Features:
Best routing and maps
Turn by turn spoken navigation
Very quick routing calculation algorithms
Route demo or map of route when trip planning
Alternative route selection options
Adventure mode for off-road, air or at sea use
Thousands of important buildings represented in 3D
Publish and share location based information with other users directly from your device
Usability and personalization
User interface fully optimized with iPhone, rotate iPhone and map will adjust.
Innovative Multi-touch gesture recognition for zoom, tilt and rotate that allows you to control and interact with the map. Kinetic scrolling.
Call, SMS or visit websites of POIs directly from NDrive's interface
User interface available in 28 languages
Other country maps are also available, including: Colombia, Belgium/Netherlands/Luxembourg, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Poland/Czech Republic/Slovakia, Hungary/Austria/Croatia and Hong Kong/Macau. Map providers and prices vary by region
Canada is available for $45 - an intro price good for a limited time.
More at iTunes (iTunes link), and the NDrive website.
Navigon has been selling well in the iPhone store, and they are pondering the idea of a more substantial mounting kit, similar to TomTom's kit that adds capabilities beyond sitting there and looking pretty. TomTom's kit will power the phone, offer a speaker and amplify the GPS signal all for about $120 when it hits the streets.
Navigon has already teamed up with Kensignton to create an iPhone mount that amplifies the sound coming out of the unit, without draining the iPhone battery. Teh acoustic amplification would be a welcome addition to anyone using a navigation application; it would be priced at $39.
Social Cellphone Game Turns iPhone into GPS Game Player
We've been seeing quite a few navigation games using your iPhone GPS. Waze Inc. has come out with a totally free GPS game—and it even turns the driving experience into a fun time. In a nutshell, Waze maps are entirely user generated. Users can also relay a heads up to others about accidents and other hazardous driving conditions. It even plays a Pac-Man type of game with drivers who are exploring uncharted territory. Since the content is user generated - it does make the app rely on people actually mapping and using it - however - it's free and expect it to work in larger areas.
This week in his column, Walt takes a look at the GPS applications available for the iPhone. He took a look at Navigon, TomTom, AT&T's from TeleNav and MotionX. The column is worth a read, but his video is not great. See for yourself that the video is relatively low value, but is a decent companion to the column out this week where he offers a lot more details on the products. Classic Walt finds that GPS units are dumber than your average local for finding decent shortcuts.... don't know what to say about that one; is that really the threshold that people measure a GPS by? I will say that I was crawling through Wiscasset Maine the other weekend on RT1 with people backed up at the bridge and due to folks stopping by Red's Eats for a lobsta roll, and tapped the GPS for a detour. Bam, found a new shortcut through the neighborhood (Down Lee St, left on High St) cutting off 5-10 minutes of wait time. Seems like good intel to me for a tourist.
ReadMore from Walt on the four iPhone Navigation APPs at All Things D
Update: The Boston Globe also looks at the TomTom iPhone App, its strengths and opportunities comparing it to over the air services too. A decent read if you want a high level point of view on the new TomTom application.
What is Augmented Reality and Where is it Going with the GPS?
Accrossair is an iPhone development firm in the UK that is setting the direction of what may be the future of the GPS. When a connected GPS has broadband connection speeds, and an electronic compass, this type of functionality may just be on the roadmap for development on a GPS coming to you. TomTom already has a patent for showing a realistic representation of the road in front of you right on your GPS, including buildings and turn indications. This would amp up the capabilities and potentially the usefulness at select times when you use the GPS.
The overlay of important destination and location information right on the screen can offer users a better sense of where they are, and where they need to go to get what they want. It's almost like having Superman-esque X-Ray vision as you look around for things that you are looking for.
There are a couple of applications coming out for the iPhone that will launch in the coming days when the iPhone OS 3.1 comes out. Because the program uses the onboard electronic compass, only the iPhone 3GS will be able to run the software. Expect a NYC Subway App, a London Tube App, and the Accrossair Browser that offers a view into all kinds of information.
TWICE has a good little article today looking at the explosion of iPhone applications that are hitting the iPhone to help you get through your navigationally challenged day. If you are a GPSLodge regular, you've seen articles on almost all of these, but when put together, the overview really starts to document the trend. I was remarking the other day that this summer is the summer that the road veered strongly away from the standalone GPS to a split pathway forward (for now maybe) of the smartphone and standalone GPS as the choices for navigation information in the future.
We've seen applications from TomTom, TeleNav, Navigon, iGo, and waze for getting you from here to there, while others have offered interesting approaches to the single problem of traffic, like Aha and Inrix. While Aha, is a crowdsourced model, the inrix application relies on its vast database of GPS probes, road sensors and the like to offer up a highly accurate picture of the traffic situation now and forecasted into the near future. According to TWICE, the Inrix model is 85 to 95 percent accurate, while others are 50 to 85 percent accurate. Users of the inrix Traffic! application will benefit from the accuracy while also becoming part of the anonymous data GPS probe data collection team.
Turn by turn directions on the iPhone is certainly left to be proven that it will take hold and deliver, but with the weight of the players behind it, one has to think that they can figure it out. there certainly are some shortcomings, including a drain on the battery, hard to hear turn directions and the smallish screen that the stand alone GPS market is countering by offering large and larger screens in most product lines. TomTom is solving for the battery issue and the turn volume issue with a hardware mount that includes charging and a speaker to offer a near-stand alone performance in the add-on package.
Yesterday on the Google blog, it was announced that Google is indeed tracking and analyzing the traffic patterns and movement info of the Google maps users when they opt to show their location to Google, and expanding it nationally to US highways and arterial roads when data is available. By analyzing thousands or millions of phones with map and posted speed limit data, they should be able to start to assemble a traffic picture that starts to build accuracy when overlaid on top of a base set of data (to fill in the gaps).
"When you choose to enable Google Maps with My Location, your phone sends anonymous bits of data back to Google describing how fast you're moving. When we combine your speed with the speed of other phones on the road, across thousands of phones moving around a city at any given time, we can get a pretty good picture of live traffic conditions. We continuously combine this data and send it back to you for free in the Google Maps traffic layers."
The crowdsource sharing capability is available on the MyTouch 3G and the PalmPre; not the iPhone which doesn't support the crowdsource feature. See the Google Blog post for more information and a way that you can opt out if the whole idea of being anonymously tracked by google freaks you out too much.
Aha is the driver to driver network for road warriors who need to deal with and hear about traffic conditions on your road ahead. Aha is different, and while it is crowdsourcing some of the alerts, the system is based on underlying traffic reporting from Inrix. When drivers need to alert each other, they can send a "Shout" - a 15 second alert to others along the way warning them about the trouble they see on the road. Aha has incorporated content from other providers like restrooms from sitorsquat.com, restaurants from Yelp, and redlight cameras from photoenforced.com. The connected nature makes these feeds, and the possibilities pretty exciting. On the fun side of things, you can also send out Careoke sing-alongs and shouts about the stupid jerk who just cut you off.
The big difference in all of this is that Aha, is not map based; it is specifically designed to be a traffic application that offers you an easy "65-MPH" interface that you can interact with and be able to deal with while driving. The large icons tell you where the traffic alerts are, and offer a quick way to get recorded details about the incident. See the video demo below on the application.
The company, which soft launched its application two weeks ago in Los Angeles, San Diego and the San Francisco Bay Area, has expanded road and traffic coverage in the following major metropolitan areas:
Navigon has issued an upgrade to their iPhone application that is selling well at the iTunes store. The new upgrade offers the ability to plan routes ahead of time which can save precious time on the road, while also tying into the iPhone to call a Point of interest directly from the listing in the Navigon application. They also tweaked the ability to control volumes between the audio from the iPhone and the audio on the navigation application. Finally, the upgrade enables you to control which POI's are shown on the map; always a help if you are on th elook out for a gas station or a place to eat, etc.
With the already launched TeleNav, Navigon, and iGo navigation applications for the iPhone, there is bound to be some need for a good mount for the iPhone while driving and navigating. The TomTom solution will offer a mount with integrated charger, but for others there is a need to find an aftermarket source. I have used and reviewed several Arkon mounts in the past for regular GPS mounts, as aftermarket offerings beyond what came with the unit and found them to be very good. One that I did not necessarily like was the one for the vents. I couldn't get a confident mount of the GPS to the vent when I was putting it on, and felt like I might snap vent louver. They offer several for the iPhone to suit your needs, and I would offer the ones other than the vet mount as good places to start your iPhone navigation journey.
Inrix Traffic on ALK Co-Pilot for iPhone
INRIX and ALK Technologies, announced that INRIX will power real-time traffic data in ALK Technologies popular CoPilot® Live™ v8 GPS navigation app for Apple iPhone, Google Android and Windows phones in North America. CoPilot is one of the 
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