Using smart phones as navigation tools is all the rage these days, what with a slew of applications available for the iPhone and Android platforms that utilize those devices' built-in GPS systems in determining users' real-time location.
One such service is from Waze, which in August released its iPhone app after being available on Android for several months. Waze's service is meant to help drivers figure out where they are and how best to get where they're going, all with the help of a large community of other motorists.
Waze gives users many different views of the road, including this one, in which users' avatars turn into a Pac-Man-type creature when going down previously undiscovered roads.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)Among the information that Waze provides are traffic flow, road reports, and warnings about where drivers might run into speed traps.
At DemoFall 09 in San Diego on Tuesday, Waze plans to unveil its latest steps forward, which include rolling out its service on every major smart phone platform (except BlackBerry) and offering, for the first time, voice prompts for directions.
That could be good news for users of, say, Symbian-based smart phones, in cities where AT&T service is spotty. And that's important because even in a city like San Francisco, using Waze on an iPhone--with AT&T as the only service provider--meant being subject to areas where there was a significant delay in information showing up on the screen.
Further, because the service will now be available on other platforms, it means that the overall amount of data available to drivers--via the crowdsourced nature of the system--will be broader. And, because users until now have had to occasionally look at their small screens to see where they need to go, the voice prompts may well mean an easier--and safer--way to get to a destination.
Waze's application begins as a standard turn-by-turn directions tool and also offers a slew of other features, many of which give drivers something fun to look out for as they make their way to wherever they're going.
"At the end of the day," said Di-Ann Eisnor, Waze's community geographer, Waze is "about a community of drivers helping to build this map."
The company is counting on one part being fun for drivers: seeing where anyone else who's using the system is.
That may be fun for a while, but the application is really about making for a better driving experience, and that will rely on a critical mass of users. Rolling out on Android and iPhone first was a good way to ensure a significant number of drivers, especially tech-savvy ones, had access to it right from the get-go. But only time will tell if the new platforms the service will be on will make a difference in producing that critical mass.
For CNET News' latest coverage from DemoFall 09, click here.
Hello, hello. It's me, the Beselo worm calling, and, man, do I have a new trick for your Symbian-based phone.
But security researchers are advising users of the Symbian S60 second-edition phones to just hang up.
(Credit:
F-Secure)
The Beselo.A and Beselo.B worms are in the wild, looking to lure Symbian S60 users into clicking on their incoming malicious files, according to a warning issued Tuesday by F-Secure.
The Beselo worms are tricky, in that they use common media file extensions, rather than a standard SIS extension, in sending their malicious payload.
Like the Commwarrior worms, the Beselo worms rely on MMS and Bluetooth to get around, with some social engineering thrown in to trick users into installing the SIS application installation file. But because this file has a common media file extension, such as beauty.jpg, sex.mp3, or love.rm, users are more likely to click "yes" to an installation prompt when opening the file, notes F-Secure.
F-Secure offers this word of advice: just say "no" to such a request.
"There is no reason for any image file to ask installation questions on the Symbian platform, so any image or sound file that does something else than play immediately is without question something else than it claims to be," warns F-Secure.
That's the latest twist on smart-phone worms, which debuted in 2004 with the arrival of the Cabir worm. The Beselo worms, meanwhile, were initially clumped in with the pervasive Commwarrior worms, until a discovery was made about their use of common media file extensions.
The 4-year-old company Mercora has re-branded itself as Social.FM, which does two things: 1) Sounds appropriately Webware-ish and 2) explains what the service does right in the name.
Mercora used to be an Internet radio service, but then it launched a music-streaming service for smart phones, "M," last year. It had a $50-a-year subscription fee, but it allowed owners to stream music from their own PC to their phone, as well as access the music of up to five friends.
But now, it's free. And it is utilizing the Internet buzzword of the moment--social--to describe itself. The Social.FM Web, a new product, is a "social music discovery service" that allows users within the Social.FM Network to log on to its site and share specially created music channels and individual tracks. Thus far, the company says there are 3.5 million tracks uploaded by users.
It's also hoping to lure developers of widgets and add-on services. The Social.FM Web site was developed in an Adobe Rich Internet Application framework and will now have Mac OS X and Linux support.
As our lives get busier and we become more reliant on text messages and e-mail, voice mail is starting to seem a tad archaic (not to mention impractical if you're sitting in a business meeting or loud bar). A company called SimulScribe has come up with a technology that claims to be the answer.
The New York-based start-up uses voice recognition technology to transcribe voice mails into text. Instead of having to sit through Grandpa Bill's three-minute voice mail, you'd get a written message, via SMS or e-mail, approximately two to five minutes after the voice mail was left, with every word Grandpa said. If you want to listen to your message the old-fashioned way, you can still call your voice mail and check it.
SimulScribe seems to combine the functions of GotVoice, with its PC capabilities, and SpinVox with the SMS function. The service also claims to have over 90 percent transcription accuracy, and unlimited voice mail storage. When I tested it out with company CEO James Siminoff, my poorly voiced message was accurate enough to have meaning. During the demo, Siminoff said the company has programmed its transcription software to not clean up or correct the content of the voice mail, to maintain authenticity.
Although the service, which is free for a week to try and then costs $9.95 a month for 40 messages, will work on any cell phone, it performs optimally on smart phones. On Monday, SimulScribe plans to announce its partnership with popular VoIP service Skype, providing Skype users the capability to receive their voice messages in text. More announcements are rumored to be on the way in late spring.
Nokia N93i
(Credit: Nokia)
Nokia N93i with Vox
(Credit: Nokia)As fellow Webwarer Josh Lowensohn reported a couple of days ago, Nokia and Vox have teamed up to bring mobile blogging to a new level. The N93i comes preloaded with the blogging service, so you can use the phone's 3.2-megapixel camera to capture photos and video and instantly upload them to Vox to share with all your friends and family. It's a wonderful idea, but if you're anything like me, you're not going to bother if the process is too labor intensive or kludgey. Well, good news, folks: Nokia gave me a working demo of the two working together, and it really was a simple thing. The booth attendant shot a lovely video of me putting my hands over my face, saved it to the phone, and within a couple of clicks had the video uploaded via a Wi-Fi connection to a sample blog for all to see (yay!). For someone who doesn't even have the patience to wait for Web pages to load on her cell phone, I was pretty impressed.
Here are some more details about the smart phone (or, excuse me, the multimedia computer, as Nokia calls it) itself. It's largely similar to its predecessor, the N93, but it has a swanky new mirrored face and refined keypad. As mentioned above, it has a 3.2-megapixel camera that can record video at up to 30 frames per second and with DVD-like quality. There's photo-editing software onboard and video-out capabilities so that you can hook it up directly to your TV. The N93i also features the Symbian operating system for your work needs and a built-in music player and streaming media support. As with all the models in the Nokia N series, the catch is that no U.S. carrier has picked up the N93i, which means if you want to snag one of these puppies, you'll have to pony up a hefty $700 or so (ouch) to buy an unlocked version of the phone. The Nokia N93i is scheduled for release by the beginning of 2007.
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