In a report last week by the KC Biz Journal, Garmin let out that the coming models (Nuvi 265T, 265WT, 275T and the Nuvi 755T, 765T, 775T, 785T) will provide free traffic feeds for life. To facilitate this, the GPS units will be coming with ads; location relevant ads at that. It's all a part of the NAVTEQ traffic and interactive ad delivery service. "Ads for nearby businesses will appear along the bottom of the screen only when the vehicle has been stopped for at least 10 seconds." according to the KC Biz Journal.
NAVTEQ delivers advertising, along with the traffic content, over its RDS network. The advertising is designed to complement the drivers' experience and is contextually relevant. For example, a driver can click on an ad to view specific restaurant information and route to the restaurant's location.
Research indicates consumers accept and even expect advertising if there is a clear value exchange and if the advertising is relevant and unobtrusive. According to research commissioned by NAVTEQ and carried out by Ipsos Understanding UnLtd in early 2008, traffic information has the highest perceived value and the greatest impact on consumers of all dynamic content types including gas prices, parking information, movie listings and times, and flight status information.
"By providing customers like Garmin an advertising-based revenue model in conjunction with RDS traffic data delivery, we believe that more drivers will have access to the most up-to-date traffic information to better manage their daily commutes," commented John MacLeod, executive vice president for NAVTEQ. "Drivers benefit by receiving free traffic while offering advertisers a new location-targeted environment to engage consumers."
Inrix & Beat the Traffic Bring Broad Coverage to TV Broadcasts
Inrix and Beat the Traffic came together to bring the broad coverage to TV news broadcasts. Inrix and their Smart Dust network are coming together in a new way to get a better view of the traffic at hand in a way that is familiar to GPS users.
"Millions of consumers rely on local broadcast TV traffic reports before they start their commutes," commented Kush Parikh, vice president of business development of INRIX. "We are thrilled to be partnering with Beat the Traffic - the clear leader in providing innovative, visually-striking 3D traffic reports to broadcast stations across the country - to provide customers with the most accurate traffic data possible to help ease their commutes."
Traffic.com has a lot of traffic capabilities to offer, and now you can go get your own traffic magnet for your site. The Magnet below is something that I can check before heading into work and see how bad the Jams are heading up into Boston. Traffic.com is a part of NAVTEQ, and they are making investments in traffic capabilities, and have expended their traffic collection streams and their fusion engine to blend and refine for better more accurate data.
Go ahead, check out their Traffic Magnet tool and create your own magnet with a custom size, look and content to suit your needs.
TomTom has launched their HD Traffic module in the Netherlands where they have users sharing their location in a network of GPS units acting as traffic probes; you help me and I help you. The FCC Site is showing the test results for the TomTom HD unit clearing the way for the module to be launched here. Usually by the time these are posted and publicly available, a launch is imminent. My hunch is an announcement soon with shipping for the holidays.
The TomTom HD Traffic Module is a cellular tranceiver that sends and receives traffic information so that you have the most up to date data available. Not only will it get information that is readily available to units with a TMC receiver, but it will also share the peer based information that other users of the TomTom HD system generate. So, if another user is stuck in a traffic jam up ahead, your unit will be aware of the jam and give you better route timing or routing options. This is similar to the Dash Express offering and how it works. Dash indicated that they needed about 2,000 units per metro area to get high quality coverage; I would imagine a similar number would be needed for TomTom also.
The TomTom HD module will be working on the GSM 850 and PCS 1900 bands and will most likely carry a monthly fee.
TrafficCast and Yahoo! Extend Deal - Detailed Traffic Flow
TrafficCast has extended their deal with Yahoo! to provide detailed traffic reporting to their maps that extends the coverage for secondary roads into many more metro areas. The better detail is provided by the DynaFlow fusion engine that captures data from not only road sensors but mobile phone data, GPS probes, weather events, and incident reports.
The capability can be seen below in a Yahoo! Maps shot this morning of the Boston Metro traffic situation not only on major highways (beltway around the city and the one main road up through the city), but the major surface roads or secondary roads that are also shown in criss-crossing the map. The status of all roads is shown in green-yellow-red according to the severity of the traffic. (Note: Recently Google added the red/black hashed markings to show really slow traffic.)
I sat down for a Question and Answer session with the CEO of TrafficCast, Connie Li. TrafficCast has developed an algorithm to aggregate not only traffic data but data impacting traffic, like weather and events. We all know that heavy traffic and accidents slow your drive, but so does rain and snow.
As we move forward, and more people have and use smart navigation devices, the ability to tie up all kinds of data into usable information streams will play a big part in our lives. TrafficCast is getting a jump on reliable traffic information gathering and on gathering all that other information too.
Well, it didn't take long to hear more news on a true navigation package coming to the new iPhone 3G after it's well publicized launch this past week. It seems that TeleNav is working on a new application for the iPhone that will give true Navigator functionality with turn-by-turn directions, visual cues and traffic alerts on the new faster iPhone with a true GPS chip.
The GPS-like applications currently in the iTunes Apps Store are no true navigation applications and the Google Maps interface on the iPhone is better at showing you what to do while walking and not driving down the road at 50 MPH.
Google Maps has recently updated its traffic flow representations to show not only the regular Red-Yellow-Green format, but a Red/Black hashing that shows super slow traffic at <10 MPH.
Can I get that on my GPS? Red goes up to 25MPH, and there is a huge difference between essentially stop and go at under 10 MPH and putting along at 25 MPH when you need to get home. One, I might try to plow through if it's short; the other I would avoid like the plague.
Note that Google also gets the predicted traffic looking at specific days and times.
Apisphere & Traffic Cast Team Up - Location Aware Future
Apisphere and Traffic Cast teamed up to continue to grow a robust offering of location aware living that will no doubt start to shape how we look at navigation and the role it plays in our lives.
Data/Environmental Awareness - Traffic is not the only thing to consider when we need to get somewhere, but it's the easy one to understand. Got to get to the airport, traffic is slow, leave early; easy to understand. Traffic Cast will be providing this pretty big component in this deal.
What about the fact that what you really need to get on the 5:15PM flight back home? There are a lot of things that impact that; traffic, time needed to return the rental car, the normal security line length, as well as the fact that your airplane is coming from Atlanta and they have thunderstorms going on there right now; your inbound plane is already 30 minutes late; delaying your flight..... All of this needs to be projected into the future. I don't want to keep checking this information for data right now; I need to know what time I need to leave the meeting this afternoon to hit the airport.
Inrix is upping the traffic ante again with some new capabilities that should continue to evolve your ability to avoid traffic. Their new 3G engine is coming with some features that make INrix equipped GPS devices more adaptable to what consumers seem to need:
More Coverage - Inrix is expanding its coverage of road miles to over 800,000 miles with integrated data sources including fleet data, and road sensors.
Time Intelligent Routing - The new system will look ahead to see what traffic conditions will be like when you are traveling, not just what the traffic conditions are at the time you set up the route. Things change, and the Inrix engine can predict those changes with its historical information.
Inrix is currently loaded in into the Dash Express. We'll be interested to see the capabilities evolve.
NAVTEQ has updated their Historical Average Speed product, called NAVTEQ Traffic patterns, including more connector roads to stretch out coverage to over a million miles of roadways across North America. The Traffic Patterns product was announced back in February 2007, and announced a partnership to product GPS units with the data through Intellinav this past January.
TomTom has the new TomTom GO 730 and GO 930 with "IQ Routes" that have a proprietary database of speeds gathered through its TomTom HOME application when you sync your TomTom and allow them to capture anonymous user data (opt in). TomTom uses TeleAtlas, but not Inrix. Oh yea, and TomTom is buying TeleAtlas.
Google Maps is using historical average speeds allowing you to "forecast" your time of travel and see the corresponding traffic issues based on Historical Average Speeds.
Garmin uses NAVTEQ maps and I had hoped for an entry from Garmin already using Historical Average Speeds to round out the pack.
More on the NAVTEQ upgrade from its Press Release.....
Inrix is taking on Europe as the next big traffic solution to go after. Teaming up with ARC Transistance, the leading network of European automobile clubs and mobility organizations across 43 European countries and territories, gives Inrix the capability to access the market, and improve the capabilities based on their technology platform and data handling capabilities. Right now, this might not mean much to you in your morning commute tomorrow, but as this partnership grows, the learning and the approach to traffic will undoubtedly create better models and solutions for drivers on both sides of the Atlantic.
Ahhh, things are getting very interesting. Google has launched the capability to look at what traffic will most likely be like at certain times of the day, all through the week. Pick the day, and the simple slider allows you to pick what time you want to see results for. Color coding can tell you how fast the traffic is moving.
You can not figure out how long your trip will be with that traffic...... yet; I am sure that this is coming.
Inrix has another announcement and they are now selling their traffic data to a company that bundles information and sells it to TV stations. So, you might just be waking up to a better traffic report soon using some good traffic data.
"Viewers tune in for fresh and vital information every day, seeking out relevant and reliable traffic and weather reports," said Bill Dow, vice-president, Media Product Management at WSI Corporation. "More than any other story, we depend on traffic and weather news because we're concerned about how daily events can disrupt our lives. What brings us to the screen is information that INRIX and WSI can comprehensively provide to viewers day after day."
Garmin - Ads on GPS Provides Free Traffic Feeds
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