• TI Does Nav, Hands-Free Voice, and FM Radio all at once
  
• ARM SoC Bakes-In SVG Tiny
• NAVTEQ Streams the Challenge
  
• TA still following
  
• Traffic.com goes D2C with 2GO
• ATX Opens, No Idea What it Does
  
• GeoMicro Eats Dog-Food for Nav, Taps TrafficCast
• TruePosition still solving 911 10 years later, tries thought leadership
• TCS launches new GIS, Traffic, Offers LBS Alert Platform to Carriers
  
• Garmin Wanders through the Wacky World of Wireless, Web 1.0 and Web 2.0
  
• NIM Announces the Announced
• Nuance Adds Voice to the Input of TeleNav
  
• Wavemarket Shoots a Birdie, Watches Telecom SOAP, and becomes an Aggregator
  
• Xora's Workers Get Weatherbugged
• Symbian Sends Map Database Heavy-Lifting Client Side
• Useful Sniffs Out facebook Friends with UK Carriers
  
• Sprint Has Instinct for Live Search & Navigation with Samsung's Touch
• Moto Brings Back the Car Phone, with Jentro under the hood
  
• Big Bell Sees LBS as Mobile Data Savior
• CTIA Offers LBS Best Practices to Carriers. Uh, ok. 
  

According to VentureBeat, Hong Kong business mogul Li Ka-Shing says he's investing $100M in facebook for a Hutch 3G-supported mobile location-based version of the networking tool.  Why not invest in 51.com instead given its regional popularity...

While the video says it uses algorithms and implies it contains some sort of signaling smarts, that's not possible without access to network RF GIS data or network timing information.  Could MyLocation be more inline with an involuntary crowdsourcing technique like this?  Yikes GSM Carriers,... watch your back bros!   

So the long awaited results of the 700 Mhz auction are finalized finally, with Google bluffing their ante (I'm sure someone has already said this was part of their game-theorized strategy to participate all along), and with Verizon and AT&T pushing forward to win rights to build-out.  There are stories everywhere.  Some suggest the results signify a victory for Google because they get the open access conditions without the associated expenses.  Others suggest the outcome is a victory ultimately for consumers because they will receive more wireless freedom-of-choice.  Perhaps it's both, but if you look closely at the FCC rules for spectrum sale in the US along with the subsequent build-out rules, you might learn that both Verizon and AT&T have lots of time to build-out these networks, and despite strong opinions citing winners, losers, bluffers, and callers, consumers may have to wait a minimum of 4 years or maximum of 10 before using real live services.  The FCC rules for build-out state that 40 percent of the US population must be covered within four years, and 75 percent within ten years from the date of the spectrum sale.  This gives VZW and AT&T 10 years to sit on this before flicking the switch.  So, who do you think won?

Mike Goettemoeller from Agile Equity wants you to know there's an MIT Enterprise Forum meeting on June 18 in NYC on the topic of The Web of Location.  Speakers include folks from Ask.com, MeetMoi, SmarterAgent, and uLocate. 

My old colleague Jamie Moss, an LBS long-timer who wrote the first European wireless location services studies back in the late 90s when we were both at The Strategis Group, has recently returned to the LBS beat, now over at ABI.  In his most recent work covering the GPS semi space, Moss predicts more technology consolidation, more acquisitions of smaller GPS outfits by other larger mainstream chip suppliers, and upwards of 1 billion GPS chips shipping by 2013 as prices per unit fall under $3.50. 

...is the mantra within Nokia's beta labs according to Rueters' Tarmo Virki.  Given the company's long history and proven ability to adapt to conditions around them, it's a mantra consistent with their impressive ability to repeatedly invite discomfort once in a comfort zone and focus on different unknown directions.   I wonder how long this mantra has been around, and would guess it's a philosophy born out of Helsinki's observations of the operations within other Silicon Valley Internet powerhouses.  Bless 'em all regardless.  They get to be the kings, set up labs, pontificate, run science experiments everyday, take risks, and make mistakes without consequences.  Sounds like me college years...

There's a certain amount of challenge not knowing precise distances to golf tees.  For me it makes golf sporty and fun.  There are serious golfers though who swear by those handheld itellicaddie dedicated GPS devices that include imbedded course maps and descriptions, and that calculate distances to tees and suggest what kind of club to use.  I'd rather guess this stuff, but I'm not a serious golfer.  Anyway, golf is indeed one of those spare-no-expense kinds of sports, and if you're serious enough about it (like I am about snowboarding) you have one of these golf GPS devices.  But, just like P-Nav devices have become victims of mobility, I see the same thing happening to the handheld GPS golf market, marked most recently by KTF's new GPS-based virtual golf caddy application.            

Does a device like the iPhone really need funding allure for developers to start coding with its new SDK?  I would think most just want to get their hands on anything resembling some platform extensibility beyond Operator lockdown, even if that's now not till June.  Or, perhaps  the iFunders think that while Apple is sure to get droves of taxable developers and designers going after other consumer-oriented pay-for apps beyond the already popular native free ones, getting enterprise apps on the iPhone actually won't be as easy and therefore might need a little incentive.  Can you see all those Mac-toting IT coders itching to integrate the iPhone with their back-end customer care, inventory management, communications, and IT automation wares.  Ha.  That's a joke.  And, where's the GPS?  

This Microsoft Research LucidTouch prototype is so cool!  Instead of optics though, wouldn't biometric fingerprint reading make this an Ultra Personal Mobile Computer instead of an Ultra Mobile PC?

-Navigadget