CTIA show

(Credit: Mio Technology)

While we weren't entirely in love with the Dash Express portable navigation device (PND), it certainly set off a trend of connected GPS devices. First, Magellan announced its Maestro Elite 5340+GPRS at CES 2008 and now Mio Technology announced its plans for a connected GPS at CTIA 2008.

Partnering up with the ATX Group, an automotive telematics service provider, the two companies are developing a PND that will provide real-time content and services. With the mobile Internet connection, the GPS device will be able to provide you with weather information based on your current location or planned destination, traffic updates, and local business searches. Mio expects to ship these new connected PNDs during the second half of the year.

Plotting routes is one of Wayfinder Active's many uses.

(Credit: Wayfinder)

The full product launch of Wayfinder Active is arriving in North America just in time for seasonal outdoor pursuits. This free edition of the premium GPS phone navigation system, Wayfinder Navigator, includes goodies that are just right for outdoor enthusiasts taking their phones on a stroll, jog, hike, or geocaching expedition. There are tools for monitoring your speed, distance, and caloric burn, for mapping routes and points of interest, for pulling up a dynamic compass, and for sharing routes or stats. For solo wanderers, there's also a panic button for calling out your location to an emergency buddy.

Appropriately, Wayfinder Active is hooked to an online social community, where members can share photos, thoughts, and routes, the latter of which are auto-uploaded online using the standard GPX format. Users can also download routes to their phones from the community, and purchase topographic maps by state, province, or country.

Watching the demo was enough to make me want to run out and buy a GPS-enabled phone, or at least go on a leafy, hilly hike. Wayfinder Active is available for most GPS-enabled Java phones, with BlackBerry coming next. Get it online or point the cell phone browser to http://active.getwf.com.

Read up on all the latest cell phone and software news from CTIA Wireless 2008.

Smart Rider combines the features of a phone and portable GPS device.

(Credit: Motorola)

Motorola broke a few molds when it announced the Smart Rider at CTIA this week. Smart Rider is a cross between a phone and a portable GPS device, using a 2.8-inch high-resolution screen for map display and turn-by-turn directions. It also has voice command and Bluetooth hands-free calling features. Although the news release is a little short on details, it seems to say that you can pair your phone with the Smart Rider, and transfer contact information. However, Smart Rider also has its own GSM connection, so presumably it would have its own phone number, and its cellular connection would be used to download maps. It also has live traffic and local search, services that would also come over a cellular connection. Smart Rider is scheduled to be available in June 2008.

(Source: Jalopnik)

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Friend-finding cell phone service Loopt is now available on some Verizon Wireless phones.

(Credit: Loopt)

Loopt is a service that uses GPS (Global Positioning System) chips in phones to pinpoint a subscriber's location; then users can broadcast that location information to friends or family, who can track them on a tiny map. Subscribers can sign up for alerts to find out when other Loopt friends are near. They're also able to tag photos and send them to friends with location information attached.

The company has been offering the service on some Sprint and Boost Mobile phones for more than a year. The service on Sprint costs $2.99 a month.

Starting in April, Verizon will offer the Loopt service for $3.99 a month. Verizon is offering the service on 20 popular data-enabled phones including the Chocolate by LG, the MotoRizr Z6tv, and the G'zOne Type-S. Customers will be able to get the application through Verizon's Get It Now virtual store.

Location-based services are expected to generate a lot of money for carriers in the future. Already, most major mobile operators are offering some kind of location-based service, such as GPS-enabled navigation or tracking. Helio, a mobile virtual-network operator, offers a tracking service that's similar to the one offered by Loopt. Other carriers, such as Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and Alltel, offer tracking services for parents who want to keep tabs on their kids.

But location services are also expected to be a big component of mobile social networking. In February, Yahoo announced that people could sign up for "proximity alerts" on its OneConnect service to let them know when friends using the service come within a certain distance of one another. And Loopt has been working with Facebook and MySpace.com to integrate its technology into those mobile Web sites.

So far, friend-finding services have had modest success. There are a couple of reasons for this. For one, the service needs to be offered on more phones and on more carrier networks. SMS (Short Message Service) text messaging was a novelty when people could only send messages to people who subscribed to the same carrier. But once they were able to text people on other carrier networks, the service exploded. The same could be true for friend-finding. The deal between Loopt and Verizon, the second-largest operator in the U.S., is a step in that direction. Loopt customers on Sprint's network will be able to track and be tracked by friends on Verizon's network and vice versa.

That said, Loopt and other friend-finding services still must overcome privacy concerns. A lot of people simply aren't comfortable with the idea of their location being broadcast to others.

Loopt says it has the privacy issues licked. Only people who have given permission to have their location broadcast will be tracked. And these users only share location information with their known friends via a private network. The company also says that the location-sharing feature can be turned on and off at any time on a friend-by-friend basis or for all friends.

In a separate announcement from Verizon Wireless, the company said Friday that it has integrated MySpace into its menu on the Mobile Web 2.0 home screen.

This will allow subscribers to click directly into the MySpace Mobile Web site from the menu, eliminating the need for customers to type in a URL in order to access the site. Verizon subscribers will also be able to edit MySpace profiles, view and add friends, post comments and blogs, and send and receive MySpace messages from their mobile phones.