Shareloc's blog - Navizon's community weblog

Geek hysteria

It is 1 PM in New York City. Still 5 long hours to go before the release of the iPhone and some people are clearly very excited about it. Here's a picture I took on my way to lunch:

People are already lining up in front of the AT&T store, some of them probably since early this morning! And again it's only 1PM!!!

Those people will probably be happy people tonight. But will they still be in a few months from now? I'm afraid they won't and here's why:
- Over the past few years I have tested many phones. I cannot remember one instance where the first generation didn't have some bugs. Many bugs... I was one unlucky customers who got the MotoQ right on the day of the release. After a couple of weeks I realized it was full of bugs: the battery wasn't charging well, the Bluetooth stack was slow and buggy etc... Motorola addressed these problems a few weeks later but it was too late for me to exchange my phone. And remember the iPod nano with the scratchable screen?
Maybe the iPhone will be more stable, but the risk taken by buying it now is pretty high.

- The iPhone is a closed platform: you cannot install applications on it. Right now, people can still live with it: if it does phone, web, camera, music and email, why would I need more, right? But when there will be a new killer app like... hmmm... let's call it Navizon... that will be released, you will wish that you could install applications on it.

Anyway, lots of luck and happiness to the new iPhone owners. Personally I will pass for now.

Underground positioning

Yesterday, I was in the subway and like many people, I need to keep myself busy during my commute. So I started playing with my phone and when I started Navizon, I noticed that the phone light was green. Even though there is not enough signal to make a phone call, I figured that Navizon might receive a tiny signal from an outside cell tower, enough to get a position fix.

So the next day I switched Navizon to "local mode" (in order not to require an Internet connection to get my position), synchronized my data and took the subway again. And... bingo!! I was able to get my position during my entire commute. Pretty cool especially since there is no other alternative method to get your position when you are underground: Navizon can be an alternative to GPS when you are outside but in an underground environment, there is no way GPS will work, so it might very well be the only working solution.

So what do you need to reproduce the experiment?
- an HTC smartphone: I am using an imate SP5m but there are other devices that would do the trick like the T-Mobile Dash
- the latest ROM update for your phone: it started working only after I installed the latest ROM update for my phone as it looks like it makes the cellular reception a little better
- Navizon running in local mode, with the data for your home area synchronized on your device.

Why an HTC smartphone? Simply because on these phones, Navizon can triangulate signals from many cell towers. And it looks like it is able to still receive a little bit of signal in an underground environment.

So I don't if this thing can be useful to someone, but I figured that first responders or underground municipal workers might like the idea. There is also this app that I have had in the back of my mind for quite a while: I always thought it would be cool to have the traffic map for the subway, just like you have  for standard traffic. With this app, one would be able to know when the subway system is congestioned, and probably be able to save the precious half hour waiting for the train during rush hour.

This blog is back in business!!

Hey guys,

I hope you haven't missed me too much.
Since the last post, we have been working our hearts out to bring you new cool stuff and there are so many new things that have happened that I don't know where to start...

So stay tuned to hear about all the goodies that have been released or will be in a near future.