My wife and I are driving to Belarus to take Christmas presents to the children of the Rechitsa Orphanage in Gomel Region Belarus. We leave via Harwich/Hook of Holland on New Year's Day. Our route will include - Hook of Holland, Berlin, Warsaw, Rogachev, Gomel and Rechitsa.
Google Latitiude is an application which, once installed on a compatible mobile phone, will update the phone location to the online google latitude page. If you want to share and view locations with friends and have a free google account, then login, add Latitude to your igoogle dashboard and add friends using their email address.
The accuracy of the location provided by Google Latitude is dependent on a number of factors; proximity to mobile phone cell towers, GPS coverage, Data connection between phone and Google Latitude and the phone privacy settings. Accuracy of location radius distances can vary greatly, from anything between a few metres and a couple of kilometres. The trip to Belarus will be a great test of all the factors.
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Google has announced a free satellite navigation
application and free music search in smartphones that operates through
Google’s Android operating system. It will be initially available in
US, on Motorola Droid phone, which employs Google’s Android 2.0
software. This new navigation system will add real time directions,
Google street view photos, voice technology and real-time traffic data. Unlike TomTom
and Garmin
GPS Satellite Navigation, Google Maps Navigation Application Google
Maps Navigation uses your phone's internet connection to give
you the latest maps and business data.
Extract from news.CNET :
The application works like any navigation system that you may have
used, but it combines Google Search and Google Maps functions that are
normally only available on the desktop and brings them to the
smartphone. Perhaps the most interesting and useful feature comes from
Google Street View, allowing Google to provide a Street View image at
every turn that the application suggests during your journey.
As with other navigation applications, users can search for gas
stations or restaurants along the way, and get real-time traffic
information. Google also developed a unique "arms-length" user
interface that automatically pops up when the software detects that it
has been placed into a dashboard holder, with bigger buttons and links
to voice controls front and center.
Obviously, Google is not the
first to offer a combination of turn-by-turn maps and Web services.
Many different smartphone applications provide this type of navigation
service, and companies like Garmin and TomTom are also working to embed
Web-delivered data into their on-dash and built-in navigation systems.
But the price for Google Maps Navigation--free--will be tough to beat.
Expect to see ads pop up at a later date, although they won't be
present at launch.
Google doesn't plan to open-source the
application but does plan to make it free on Android 2.0 phones, and
implied that the application would be free for other partners as they
cut deals to use the application. That could dramatically reduce the
cost of developing navigation services, undercutting the established
industry with a product that consumers already know very well: there
are 50 million active users of Google Mobile Maps, Gundotra said.
Google is not sure whether Google Maps Navigation will work on older
Android phones that will get upgraded to Android 2.0. That depends on
the carrier and phone maker, Gundotra said.
