[maemo-users] Google Maps Navigation takes a mobile turn

[From: Kevin T. Neely]

That really works?  I've been rocking mobile navigation for a couple years
with Ovi Maps (formerly Nokia Maps), and more recently waze.  The first is
excellent, the latter very promising.

I understand that Ovi Maps is not quite ready for primetime on the N900.
Maybe one of the reasons they postponed the launch?

K

On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 9:10 PM, Mark Haury <wolfmane at gmail.com> wrote:

> http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10384544-265.html?tag=nl.e703
>
> Finally, a navigation solution for handhelds that really works. As soon
> as T-Mobile comes out with an Android 2.0 phone that I like, it's
> sayonara to the piece of crap TomTom I bought a couple of months ago
> (I'm on the third unit with a defective battery and am not going to
> bother sending this one in - I'll replace the battery myself - but
> that's just scratching the surface of all the horrible design problems.
> I incorrectly assumed that TomTom had been around long enough to figure
> out how to make a gpsr, but I should have stuck with Garmin) as well as
> my Nokia tablet that never really did anything well and is now dying an
> ugly death due to corrupt and probably failing internal flash memory.
>
> Maybe this will force the standalone gps manufacturers to bring the map
> update prices down to something approaching reasonable. Or even run them
> all out of business, which they so richly deserve after all these years
> of highway robbery. 95% of the map data they get for free from
> governments and other free and public sources, at least 4% of it is
> corrections from their own consumers who have paid dearly for maps, and
> _maybe_ 1% of it is obtained in-house. And since at least 95% of any
> given map update is identical to the old map, it's absurd to assert that
> they have any real financial investment in it. It's a racket very like
> the printer manufacturers who sell some printers near and sometimes even
> below cost, but make such extremely high profit margins on the ink and
> toner that they could give the printers away for free and it wouldn't
> make any difference. Can you say "at least 6000% profit"?!?!? (Except
> the GPS manufacturers are making a very healthy profit on the hardware
> as well.)
>
> Mark
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