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
Inrix Launches Traffic Application for Android - Crowd Sourced Traffic
Inrix has launched their Inrix Traffic application for the Android platform following their iPhone launch earlier this year. The application takes advantage of a massive amount of road coverage (160,000 miles covered), and gives you detailed information about the situation on roads around you via color coded maps that you can pan, and zoom on. The Red, Yellow, green designations on roads allows you to quickly see the congestion levels, while incident reports offer insight into some of the causes of the congestion. The Inrix App also forecasts traffic conditions up to an hour into the future so you can see what life might be like if you leave later.
The Inrix traffic application gets its data from a network of road sensors, and traffic probes like Taxi's, delivery trucks, long haul trucks, and other Inrix Traffic users, yes that's right; you and me. On the Terms and Conditions for my iPhone App, they confirm that the application collects anonymous data, and processes it for the traffic reporting and collection. It reads in part: "By using this App, you agree to Inrix's collection, processing, storage transfer and ...use of your non-personally identifiable information (anonymous) as part of Inrix's comprehensive traffic products."
So, join the crew, see what the traffic is like in your area, and help out the rest of us at the same time.
I have to admit that I am a bit o a traffic junkie and am looking forward to the day when I can press a button and have the roads clear ahead of me as I drive to work. That will probably never happen, but short of that, I would settle for being overly informed about the status of the traffic, including accurate predictions of my arrival time, smart alternate routes and automatic re-routes when issues arise.
As connected GPS unit become more mainstream and their connections are made through higher and higher speed technologies, the potential to incorporate traffic cameras, becomes a reality. I am talking about the sometimes streaming camera shots of the traffic on major routes, not the red light cameras that try to catch people as they blow through red lights. The bandwidth needed is real, but the interface issues are easy to overcome. Imagine seeing red on your traffic route, then tap the Cam icon, and a window pops up with either a static image or a streaming image to give you a very good idea of the issue.
Some concerns: Driving off the road or into the back of another car as you look at the streaming traffic, the cost of the service would go up as downloaded content amount goes up, thus driving up the cost of the service beyond what people are interested in paying for, and clunky, unreliable serving of the webcam feeds - they aren't currently known for highly reliable shots of the roadway (glare, rain, mis-directed cameras pointing at the side of a building, etc.)
Despite all of that, I like the potential, and would like to see what a major could do with the idea.
Nokia/Navteq traffic to use Nokia GPS Smartphones as Data Probes
Last week, Nokia/NAVTEQ took a big step forward on the development of their traffic network globally. The basis is the Traffic.com acquisition by NAVTEQ with road sensors, GPS probes and now the very broad network of the Nokia GPS enabled phones. Last week I joked along with Rich over at GPSTracklog.com on my Twitter feed that this move would expand coverage by dozens of miles in the US, but that if course is a little limited. We may have been a little harsh in that assessment. The reality is that this move should have been well anticipated, and should provide the framework for them to start amping up the coverage and feeds of both North America and Europe.
If the aggregation of the datafeeds and subsequent timely reporting out of that information is done well, you can't underplay the importance of adding millions of smart phones as anonymous GPS probes in the understanding of traffic situations and how you can make better decisions about your drive. They clearly have a scale here to make a difference. Should be interesting to see how this comes to life.
Also, NAVTEQ Traffic delivers a single source solution enabling drivers uninterrupted traffic information when crossing borders in 11 countries including Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland. NAVTEQ Traffic will also be available in Luxembourg and The Netherlands by the end of 2009. This will certainly help Garmin (NAVTEQ Customer) to combat TomTom (Owns TeleAtlas and utilizes in-house data collection of connected GPS) on the Euro turf, and is also an acknowledgement of the advanced need for traffic reporting on the Euro continent.
"Nokia continues to expand its community and delivers technologies that improve the lives of users," said Michael Halbherr, Director of Social Rental Services division at Nokia. "Part of our commitment is to ensure respect for the privacy of users, while offering the best offer traffic information so drivers have the latest information timely. "
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.
Lexus and Toyota get OnStar Like Services - Future GPS Probes?
ATX will provide new Lexus and Toyota cars with OnStar like services in the coming year, with Navigation Enabled cars getting some extra navigation assistance via the agent and an online portal. What caught my interest, and one of our readers Jim is the potential for these cars to act as GPS probes. With Toyota bumping up against GM as the leader car maker, a new source of GPS probes will be entering the market with full force. The future starts to get a lot brighter for vast amounts of GPS probe data:
Road sensors cover main interstates but with gaps in service
Delivery trucks act as GPS probes for major metro areas, covering hundreds of thousands of miles
GPS and cellular equipped cars like those with the ATX service and OnStar add millions of GPS probes all over the US
Smart Phones running navigation programs push back traffic data while you use them - Inrix Traffic, and potentially the forthcoming TomTom iPhone App
Connected GPS units also offer more data, and are the main consumer outlet for traffic information to the consumer
Now one just has to crunch all of that information, overlay it and get it back out to consumers quickly before the data is stale. Not hard is it?
Inrix has launched a direct to consumer application for the iPhone that will have you checking what the traffic is like now, and what predicted traffic will be in the near future. The free application allows you to take a look at the high quality traffic feed data in your metro area on the iPhone and then if you want, click on the "Forecast" button to peer into the future to see what's coming. It might just help you solve the "Should I leave now or wait it out?" question.
The interface is clean and comes with incident reporting. The data comes from their broad "Smart Driver Network" or GPS probe vehicles and road sensors. They claim to have the largest crowd sourced network in the world with over 1 million vehicles on it. TomTom just recently tied up with Inrix for work with their LIVE devices (think GO 740 LIVE and/or the coming iPhone application). No word on exactly how and where the data will be used, because TrafficCast is still part of the deal. The iPhone application is interesting and certainly fills the gap that they have in getting their name and high quality data out there. What it may also be coming is the ability for you to become part of the million+ strong army of GPS probes, reporting back to them the traffic status too. Pure speculation, but the ability to ingest the data and process it in a quick fashion to understand the very dynamic traffic situations, make them strong.
Inrix has announced their first major expansion of capabilities into Europe as they put a solid foot on the ground with 50,000 KM of covered flow data for roadways across major western European countries. Inrix continues on a quality message with the work to demonstrate the quality of their Euro coverage through "ground truth" testing to validate the data set and traffic model work.
"High quality pan-European traffic information simply does not exist today," said Bryan Mistele, INRIX president and CEO. "We are working hard to change that, as we did in the U.S., by leveraging key strategic partnerships, using our proven sophisticated technologies and applying our unique and scalable crowd-sourcing model to the aggregation of traffic information."
Next up; the rest of Europe for 2010. Full press release below......
Airsage Adds Verizon Handsets - Boost to Covered Miles
The Battle Royale of traffic providers continues to drive interest amoung our readers, and Airsage just made a big deal to add Verizon wireless handsets to their list of providers who offer anonymous mobile phone movement data to help understand traffic flow patterns across the nation. Airsage has been providing this information to outlets like Google Maps, where you can see their coverage down to secondary roads around major cities. That coverage is impressive, which will now extend to "200,000 centerline miles of roadway" by quadrupling the number of traffic status information bursts from these handsets. The concern is and always will be quality of data; let's face it, coverage doesn't mean anything if the data is inaccurate. With the Verizon Guy behind Airsage, one has to imagine that the quality will take a big jump on these covered roads.
Inrix, Traffic.com and TrafficCast are other major traffic providers in the space that use various data gathering techniques to capture, analyze and even predict traffic patterns around you. See more info on traffic providers in our Traffic Section.
Interesting news bit out that is reporting iSupply data indicates that there is a boom ahead of us in real time traffic reporting subscriptions. Yes, I know you knew that, but now the rest of the world does too. The expectations are that the subscriber base could grow by 10X versus today to 51 million in 2014, up from about 4.6 million today. Revenue could jump to $1.3Bil from a little over $100 million today.
It's no surprise that people are interested in this, but what is driving it is the very real change that we are seeing in the delivery of traffic solutions and how data is being utilized, refined and sent out to the ever increasing legion of navigation solutions. things have changed and a next generation solution is taking shape. I wrote about some of the barriers that would be falling back in January 2007, to create a bigger, better traffic reporting solution, and for the most part, we are now seeing all of that coming to fruition.
1) High quality databases using historical traffic data are in use - just consider the TomTom IQ Routes next time you buy a TomTom, or use any resource that uses the Inrix data systems.
2) Increase in coverage and flow capabilities - the increase is there, but not to the point that we all have access to flow data on secondary roads which is what I really want. It is present in some higher end traffic databases though.
3) Bandwidth - TomTom LIVE (Go 740 in US) has cellular connections as does TeleNav Shotgun for high bandwidth two-way data transfer; result is more detailed and more accurate assessment of the traffic issues ahead. Furthermore, you are starting to see high quality mobile phone applications roll into the market with traffic feeds; plenty of bandwidth to grab not only data but over the air delivery of maps on some of them.
I think that the building blocks are there for this reported leap in the subscriber base, but I would like to see better application of the traffic database to the end product on secondary roads across more devices, as well as the higher end units roll down their capabilities for Go 740/Shotgun caliber traffic to the mass market units to enable the subscription market to take off.
NAVTEQ - Upgraded Traffic.com Site for Mobile Phone Use
Traffic.com has upgraded to include a mobile friendly site online to help you deal with the woes of traffic. The site mirrors that functionality online of it's regular site where you can not only get a quick view of traffic in your area, but login and get your Jam Factors and overviews of what your critical drives might look like.
I use Traffic.com to store a couple of drives (work related) and they email me daily the situation on the roads, with estimated drive times and traffic congestion levels - the Jam Factor. After accommodating for the fact that the data arrives just after 7AM, and I generally get on the road about a half hour later, the email alerts are good enough to give me a good look into what the overall traffic situation is. With the Mobile data, you'll have this type of insight and of course the little maps there too to help you deal with the traffic.
Set up an account at Traffic.com, then head over to Mobi.traffic.com for the full benefits. Or just head over to the mobile website straight away to check it out.
The next time there's a Homeland Security drill, they will be avoiding heavy traffic and traffic incidents using the Inrix data and capabilities to help speed the response. The data will be used by GeoDecisions' IRRIS portal to help the military and Homeland security with accurate traffic flow and incident reporting.
"With the ability to access INRIX's comprehensive yet precise traffic information, customers using GeoDecisions' IRRIS portal will be better able to anticipate traffic congestion and hazardous road conditions and plan or adapt their routes accordingly," said Bryan Mistele, INRIX president and CEO. "Together with GeoDecisions we are helping the U.S. military and Homeland Security optimize their logistical operations to ensure they have the safest and most efficient means available for transportation routing."
This comes on the heels of Inrix being selected to provide data to TomTom as part of their LIVE capabilities in the US.
In an about face, TomTom has selected Inrix to power their dynamic feeds for it's Plus and LIVE services going forward. Originally, TomTom did not select Inrix as their provider of traffic for the US, but have decided that the package of quality data from Inrix is worth the switch. This is not the first time Inrix has come in and taken over for what appear to be higher quality, more desirable coverage or feeds - it happened last year in Alabama, where Inrix essentially saved their traffic broadcast program that sounded like it was dead in the water.
Inrix will provide the traffic feed, and gas prices feed to LIVE and Plus services across the country.
Inrix Triples Flow Coverage - over 160,000 Miles in 126 Markets
Inrix has upped coverage again but this time for the flow enabled roads. So, while they cover incident and status on many more miles across the US, they are reporting that they now cover over 160,000 miles of roads for flow information. This is key to figuring out more precise travel time information, allowing your device or software service to get more accurate information on which to base routing and travel time decisions.
You may have seen the announcement Monday of Microsoft selecting INRIX traffic to enhance its voice-activated local search service, Live Search 411. Consumers can access this expanded coverage data through hundreds of applications and portable navigation devices such as the new Ford SYNC with Traffic, Direction and Information, MapQuest, AT&T Navigator and TomTom.
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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