Honey, the satnav app says you're to leave at 6am... Yup. I'll have that coffee off you For all the cleverness of location-based services, which will tell you the best places to eat and sleep when you arrive somewhere strange, most people just do the same job and complete the same journey every day. The bread-and-butter for navigation app maker CoPilot GPS is providing routes to people who go to a lot of …
When Google Now first came out it took me a week before the system would recognise by preferred commuting route. Now, no pun intended, I get a notification at around the time I usually leave for work or about to head home to tell me the traffic condition and ETA.
When I was levelling up playing Ingress, I'd get notifications asking me whether I'd want Now to notify me of traffic conditions to a few portals I regularly visit.
If your boss at work told you to delete all the files pertaining to last months financial records, would you?
If a police officer told you to lay down on the floor with your arms spread out, would you?
If your significant other told you to shut up and hand over the TV remote, would you?
Some people have driven up to the edge of cliffs, into swollen fords, or on to tidal flats because the satnav told them to. If a person trusts some(body/thing) giving them advice, they are likely to take that advice. This has been the case for millennia, history is full of people(s) apologising for bad decisions taken under bad advice.
If your NSA chief told you to invade Iraq because they are making and stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, would you?
zzzzzz.... pointless post Coward. If you use a mobile phone (even a feature phone) and/or have a debit/credit card, then this stuff has been known for DECADES.... have you only just realised this?
Regardless, Google Now is super-useful, probably the best innovation in the mobile space in the last 2 years....
Sure mobiles track you and card spending can also be used but these are held by different companies. I think the point being made is that Google is becoming a single owner of all data and gathering all this information in a single space and therefore could mine it for whatever reason.
Whether you are comfortable with that is your decision. Well until such time as there isnt a non-Google option, maybe they should change their name to Weyland-Yutani
at the moment google now is telling me that I can walk over a mile in less than 1 minute.
My Nokia 'hone maps once told me a 210 mile journey (in the UK) would take 2h 40m. That's an average speed of 80 mph, and given that I was starting in the middle of Rochdale so had 10 miles of local roads before I reached the motorway, and another 20 miles along country roads at the other end, I have no idea what speed they were goading me to get up to.
Waze does all of this and, being community supported, has real-user traffic/incident reporting as well as user-fixable mapping and navigation errors.
Oh... and it tells you when friends (/partner) are going to arrive at the same location (i,e. home) if they are using it too.
Ask the "premium" SatNav players how often they update their maps (and how much they'll charge you to do it!). It feels strange driving down a road that has clearly been there a couple of years (e.g. around Stamford in Lincs) and be shown as being in a field!
Converted Wazer since last December. The eldest put it on my S4 when we were driving around seeing friends at Xmas. It's only in the last few months that I now use it all the time as the routing is significantly superiour to my tomtom (2 yrs old, lifetime map updates yet still manages to take me the wrong direction or the long way around). I like the fact that you can contribute road issues live and it gets flagged up on other wazers screens Been thanked a few times which is nice.
Tie that into google maps and I have a pretty powerful satnav.
Used to swear by copiot on the old windows mobile, but after many many years of useage and upgrades copilot decided to not support WM7 and there were no discounts for switching platforms. So bye bye from me!!
> It feels strange driving down a road that has clearly been there a couple of years (e.g. around Stamford in Lincs) and be shown as being in a field!
No, what feels strange is being told to turn left (or right) onto the overpass 50 ft above you.
( If it was 50 ft below and I had set "Stunt Driving" mode on, I could perhaps understand )
I still don't get why anyone would bother to use a Sat-Nav (or App) for their daily commute - It's a journey you do every day, surely you should know the route and any shortcuts or alternatives?
Some people seem to be completely unable to function in life without a computer telling them what to do...
</grumpyoldman>
"Although from my experience the information about the delays tends to come when I'm already stuck in the tailback its warning me about."
In fairness, not with Google Maps... it always tells me when there is traffic ahead and I can re-route. I love surprising my 3 year old with "I bet there is traffic around the corner..., "Wow, how did you know that Dad?!"
I quite like to know when I will arrive, and when I need to set off. Usually takes 45 minutes, but there are some real bottlenecks that can appear on the way that can double that, and it helps to be alerted so I can drive round them. Being particularly lazy, I don't like leaving the house until I have to.
I have two routes I can take on my commute. One takes about 5 minutes less, unless there has been an accident, in which case it can take 20 minutes longer. Having this decide which is longer as I leave the door sounds a lot better than my current method of squinting at red and black lines on the traffic map and then guessing which is worse.
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