There has been lots of news lately about GPS-enabled applications, data, and devices, some tied to the Where 2.0 2008 conference last week. ABI Research said that by 2012 more than 550 million GPS-enabled handsets would ship. Navteq announced updates to its North American traffic database, adding Puerto Rico and Canada as well as expanded [...]

Garmin announced its first mobile phone yesterday. According to Garmin, it’s slim, sleek, innovative, and a breakthrough. It’s a phone, navigator, camera, browser, and music player. Many of the media reports on it reflect surprise. I am not surprised. Why wouldn’t Garmin make a phone? Convergence has been in force in technology forever. The phone [...]

Let’s say you are an emergency coordinator dealing with a chemical spill and need to notify all police, fire, medical, and rescue professionals within a 50-mile radius. Send a message with the alert, and only those in that radius are asked to respond. Even residents of an area can subscribe to the service to receive [...]

Verizon Wireless said it would open its network to outside devices and applications. As has been widely reported, Google and others have been pushing to break through what some see as the market expansion logjam resulting from carrier policies and practices that close their networks to outsiders. For location-based applications this is a win. The [...]

At the CTIA conference last week, there were some announcements about location-based services (LBS) on mobile devices including BlackBerrys and other smartphones. Garmin made a few announcements starting with a navigation system for drivers. The Garmin Mobile 20 system uses voice-prompt directions for drivers, and provides a 3D map display on a BlackBerry or smartphone. [...]