Smartphone navigation replacing expensive built-in car navigation systems

My almost three year old Audi is equipped with, what was at that time, the most expensive navigation system. Having such a "superior" navigation system I have never thought that any free navigation application delivered by smartphones would be worth considering. Since a new motorway was opened between Utrecht and Amsteram, I realized that my navigation system had to be updated. After calling a dealer I was surprised to hear that the 2011 navigation update costs 199 Euro which is a special offer as a normal price is 269 Euro! I found this price ridiculous and, as a matter of principle, I decided try Google beta navigation delivered with my Nexus S.

The more I used it the more I liked it. What I like most is a green light indicating that there are no traffic jams on my journey - which unfortunately doesn't happen very often in the Netherlands. Fortunately with the new motorway the traffic situation has improved significantly. My first observation: Google traffic information is much more accurate than the one delivered by my Audi system. That's not a surprise as Google must be collecting all this information from other users. The more drivers will be using the Google Navigation the more accurate this information will be and there will never be a car navigation system which will be able to compete with it.

The user interface is much simpler, and finding a Point of Interest is not only very easy but there are many more than on the Audi's DVD. Last but not least all this information is updated real time and you have access to it immediately after new information is available without waiting for another year just for an updated DVD !

There is one caveat with the Google navigation application: it generates lots of data traffic what could be a killer for your data usage plan and is not a real option when going abroad due to the high data roaming costs. I hope that Google will reduce the amount of data usage and also soon offer an offline version allowing downloading a map and using navigation without Internet Connection. There are rumors that Google will release an off-line navigation by the end of this year

Such an offline alternative is offered by the NAVIGON navigation application which (in a basic version) is delivered for free with a T-Mobile subscription. I used it on my iPhone as well and in many ways it is also superior to the Audi navigation system. However the traffic information option and maps for Europe need to be purchased separately for just 19 Euros each. My wife - a big iPhone fan- is very enthusiast about this application.

I am positive that the smartphone powered navigations will become a good alternative for the built-in car navigation systems pushing car manufactures to start delivering more open navigation systems allowing one to connect smart phones and taking advantage of the power of Internet. This could result in using a large car control display by the smartphone navigation. In my view even the most expensive models equipped with the Head-Up Displays, which features my friend recently demonstrated to me in his new BMW 535, could take advantage of the integration with smartphone applications.

The speed of innovation in smart phones designs and applications is amazing and the only way to compete with them is to work on car ecosystem allowing seamless co-existence with smart phones and other intelligent Internet devices. It will offer the drivers an opportunity of taking advantage of the newest navigation technology even while driving their favourite old car they are so attached to.  

BMW  recognizes the potential in the smartphone innovation wave and just started a  New York based venture devoted to location based services. BMW recently launched MyCityWay application and I just started using MYCityWay Amsterdam.
BMW already offers smartphone users opportunity to read emails on the large control display. This in my view is a far better strategy than turning a car into an Internet device as Audi recently demonstrated.  
What about the manufactures of dedicated navigation devices such as TomTom?  The latest TomTom profit warning indicates that they already suffer from smartphone navigation competition.   

Google keeps working on several new features and improvements of its beta navigation software. The most serious bug I spotted was when Google navigation recommended my standard route via A2 to Amsterdam, while it was closed by the police for investigation after a robbery in Amsterdam during which the gangsters escaped after driving the A2 south up to 240km per hour using explosives and machine guns.
 

I am looking forward to the first release of the Google maps navigation and an opportunity to use it in my new car without the necessity of having to buy a car dock.

Is iPad contributing to Amazon record E-Book sales?

Few weeks ago Amazon reported that after less than four years of selling electronic books, it's now selling more of them than printed books.

Amazon sells 105 electronic books for every 100 printed ones.

This news did not surprise me. Not just because the analysts frequently reported the growing e-book reading Kindle devices sales.

Since I purchased my iPad a year ago I was a frequent Amazon customer buying Kindle eBooks.

I purchased my first e-book more than a year ago just a few days after I bought the iPad to have something to read on the way back to Amsterdam. As I could not purchase anything via iTunes due to a lack of a billing address in US I was forced to buy on Amazon and bought a Kindle version of eBook. It was the New York Times bestseller "Change your Brain Change your Body" by Dr. Amen

A very fascinating journey through a recent brain-body connection research.
My collection of Kindle E-books on my iPad is growing and at the moment I carry with me:
"Creativity in Product Innovation" by Jacob Goldenberg
"The Adversity Advantage" by Paul G. Stoltz
"The 4 - Hour Workweek" by Timothy Ferriss
"Full Catastrophe Living" Jon Kabat-Zinn
Today I bought the Travel Goa book as we plan to go there in November. Initially just to compare the iBook reading experience with Kindle I tried to buy the iBook version.
That try was a big failure. Unfortunately the Travel Goa book was only available in the US iTunes store and not in the Dutch one.
As long as Apple will keep confusing readers with restrictions while buying iBooks in different countries Amazon’s Kindle is - in my view - the best choice for eBooks on iPad.
My eBook reading experience was very positive.

I discovered unique features of the Kindle iPad reader as sharing my notes with my wife or highlights with the Amazon E-books readers community. I often read the Kindle free samples on my iPhone to review the book first and find it fantastic to have an opportunity to learn and start reading a new book almost immediately after I have heard about it.

I am convinced that the Kindle iPad application contributes to a large extend to Amazon great e-Books sales numbers. It is quite ironic as the iPad is a direct competitor to Kindle device. It's also ironic that due to very restrictive iTunes policy I was forced to do my first iPad purchase in the US on Amazon giving me an opportunity to learn Kindle E-books.

I still buy lots of printed books and I already know that some of them I will also purchase in E-book format. I do not think I will switch over to eBooks completely as there is nothing like a smell and touch of a new book (:
Amazon reported that the latest and the cheapest version of a Kindle device is the bestseller of the line.
However, despite of the Kindle device success, I would bet that in just a few years more Kindle eBooks will be read on iPads and Android tablets than on Kindle devices.

iPad a great future in-flight entertainment device

Flying by Martinair in the Comfort Class from Amsterdam to Cancun I received a heavy in-flight entertainment device. After watching one movie I switched over to my iPad. I had it fully loaded with my books, Financial Times and Sudoku.The iPad battery; good for a 10 hour flight and the superb screen makes the iPad an excellent in-flight entertainment device.

My recent flight to San Francisco again proved that even the KLM business class entertainment system - with a very large built-in screen in front of you- cannot compete with my iPad. The system was so over-engineered that we were even warned by stewardesses about the difficulty of finding the right spot where we could plug-in our headphones. It took me and my neighbour quite a while to find it out.

I think that there is an opportunity to change the way of designing in-flight entertainment systems. Instead of investing in costly hardware as part of the passenger seat equipment, it is better to rely on their tablets and make sure that the passenger devices can get connected to the entertainment system.

iPad applications should allow to select movies, (digital) newspapers/magazines,  food menu and pass any other flight preferences at home - long before the flight. Passengers would be offered an option of Internet connection and receive skype calls, which would mean getting rid of the unhandy phone/remote control devices.

In my view this solution offers a superb customer experience, which would allow airlines in reducing in-flight entertainment and logistics costs, and could be introduced as an option next to the already existing in-flight entertainment systems. More and more passengers will have their own iPad. According to iSuppli market research media tablet shipments will grow to more than 202 million units in 2015, up from 17.4 million in 2010.  I expect that the sales of iPads and other tablet devices will far exceed these aggressive predictions as the iPads are becoming a part of the family live style. Here I can’t resist quoting my wife "I love my iPad!".

I see no point any more in manufacturing specialized in-flight entertainment devices.  It is better to focus on iPad or Android tablets applications giving access to the  in-flight entertainment content. Manufactures of specialized in-flight entertainment equipment will never be able to keep the innovation pace with Apple and Android tablet manufactures.In-flight entertainment devices are getting expensive which is clearly illustrated by the recent Alasca Airlines announcement about the price increase of the in-flight entertainment rentals.

It is time to switch over to the tablets and start developing passengers iPad and Android tablets applications. The apps, NOT the airline websites will make a difference in the passengers flying experience in the future.  

Excessive data usage by my Nexus S

Today I found out that my Nexus S was blocked by Vodafone due to a very high data usage during my trip to San Francisco. Since I paid a very high bill for data roaming in Mexico where costs for data are a few times higher than in other countries I am very careful with data roaming. On that particular day, when I reached Vodafone security threshold, I only used Foursquare to check in. I have no clue how I could  download so much data!

It looks like Android 2.3 keeps some "data hungry" applications running in the background. I am very happy with Vodafone blocking my phone, suspecting it was being stolen, and preventing much higher data roaming costs. I checked on the Internet and found that more Nexus S users noticed much higher data usage. A bug in Android 2.3?  It is time to install  3G watchdog and find out more about Android 2.3 features driving such high data usage and DISABLE them!

Since I installed 3G Watchdog Pro  (a data usage monitoring program), I have a much better understanding of the data usage per application on my Samsung Galaxy S and Nexus S.  I realized that  a number of applications are continuously sending and receiving data in the background, which as a user of one application you might not be aware of. My advise is to use this 3G Watchdog Pro, or at least its free version especially when abroad in order to minimize the risk of being surprised by the high roaming costs.

After having collected more data usage statistics I hope to gain a better insight into what happened while I was in San Francisco and how to structurally reduce the data usage on my Nexus S in the future.

My findings you can find here

Audi: the future Internet Gadget ?

During the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Audi presented an A8 luxury sedan model with in-built 100Mbps Internet connection based on Long-Term Evolution (LTE) technology.


It's a very good news. Not because of a perspective of driving an Audi and offering my passengers HD TV on demand. I do not think consumers are waiting for yet another Internet provider offered by car manufacturers. I would prefer car manufacturers  focus on innovation in designing cars able to connect with driver's / passengers smartphones or tablets and offering them new, Internet based ,services.


Why, as an Audi driver , are you still forced to buy an expensive DVD with updated maps or go to a garage to update your navigation software instead of downloading from the Internet?


It is a very good news as LTE technology should enable another generation of customer service I was missing so much during my two years Audi driving experience.


From the day one I was experiencing strange software/electrical problems causing the Audi engine to stall. Many visits to the Audi garage led to only a partial improvement , mainly due to the difficulty to reproduce the problem.


My observation is that the Audi's advanced technology is far ahead of the Audi customer service unable to support complex software/electrical problems.


Constant online connection should help to diagnose a problem by providing sufficient real time information about engine stall cases.


It will take few years, depending on a country, to take advantage of the new Audi feature. I hope that Audi will use this time to improve its service organizations by equipping them with new LTE based diagnostic tools.


In the meantime I am going to enjoy a new Lexus or BMW driving experience and my passengers HD TV on their iPads or Android tablets.

Tired of Skype problems on Android phone?Think about upgrade to Nexus S !

Those smartphone users frustrated by Skype problems on their Android devices should watch Nexus S video



and read the specification. This is the first Gingerbread (Android 2.3) smartphone. It is an amazing device with such features portable Wi-Fi support and enhanced VoIP dialing. The pace of innovation of Android smartphones is impressive and I am looking forward to Apple response..

Skype,still, not working on Samsung Galaxy

In my previous post I declared the Skype problem as solved by upgrading to Android 2.2. However I experienced some stability issues and started to follow the “Skype is not working on Samsung Galaxy S” thread on the Skype blog, as this is the only one which gets enough attention from the Skype moderator. 

Skype causes lots of headaches not only for the Samsung Galaxy users but also- as you can see on the Skype for Android forum - Sony Xperia, HTC Hero, Motorola Spice XT300, HTC Wildfire users are suffering. All these issues with Skype on the Android smartphones remind me about the early nineties when successfully running Windows applications often depended on the Windows version or the PC manufacture. 

I was working for a very successful, at that time, Dutch PC manufacture company Tulip Computers. My team was responsible for the Microsoft Windows certification tests and obtaining the Windows logo. The real breakthrough in removing hardware dependencies from applications was the introduction of the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) announced in 1992 during the first Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) in San Francisco. This was to ensure that future Windows NT could support different hardware architectures as Power PC, DEC Alpha and Intel. The "Plug & Play" initiative started with the introduction of the Windows 95 turned out to be initially “Plug & Pray”. Microsoft's strategy soon payed off.

I had the opportunity to visit Microsoft labs in Redmond at least a few times a year, and was impressed by the continuously improved test certification process. The Microsoft Windows architecture initiatives and a strict Microsoft certification policy contributed to an accelerated innovation in PC hardware and software leading to a dramatic price erosion and Intel/Microsoft dominance. Android will drive innovation in the field of smartphone devices as well. However the current Android maturity problems first need to be addressed to ensure the vendors can focus on the devices/software innovation and avoid spending so much time on fixing incompatibility problems.

I strongly believe, as Steve Wozniak, that Android will become the dominant smartphone platform. However the quality and the application's support needs to improve. For customers' experience, it is all about their favorite applications and based on my Skype experience Android is still in a "Plug & Pray" phase.

Android 2.3 is on its way and for sure it will bring some improvement.