Meet Me on Dearborn Street
location based services
Posted by Emory 11 hours ago
Let me tell you about why I love smart2go from Nokia.
smart2go is Nokia’s free software for speaking to a Bluetooth GPS device on your S60 handset.
A lot of new handsets coming out soon, such as the N95 and the E90, come with integrated GPS modules. And there have been applications for using such a device on the market for quite a while now, but all of them are pretty expensive, so Nokia has been giving us “waypoint/landmark” and general “directional” location software for a few months with S60v3 devices. This has been a pretty clever move on their part, and I’m glad that instead of sticking with a half-assed deployment or “pilot” like they have done in the past, they’ve actually been spending some real resources on this type of thing.
So while I was getting ready for my trip to Chicago with Liz, I grabbed smart2go and installed it, and setup an inexpensive Bluetooth GPS (which I had next-day air’ed from Expansys/MobilePlanet, and wasn’t going to get to my house before we left, so my UPS dispatch told me where I could meet up with the driver, which is pretty nice of ‘em) and started using smart2go.
Now, the local services and such can be searched ad-hoc while in the application, so you can search for places to go eat, drink, and be merry, or find historical sites, businesses based on name, address, or category, things like that. Usually you only get this type of information when you’re paying hundreds of dollars for the privilege, the software is never cheap. But the way Nokia does it is on a subscription basis. You can give them a micropayment of $9USD or something for seven days of access, which is what I did. I then installed the maps using the Nokia Map Loader for places I spend time (DC/VA/NY/MA/RI/IL/IA/CA/UK/etc) and started checking things out.
Since you can get updates and such over the Internet via the WiFi on the phone or the data service from my operator (T-Mobile’s EDGE service in my case) the information is pretty current, though there are a lot of things it didn’t seem able to find that have been around for a while, but I was able to find them by address (which I looked up with Google Maps on my phone), and then set them as landmarks. I put in some of my contacts, since smart2go lets you search based on Contact information on the device.
The navigation part is pretty good, and uses a variety of voices. I went with English(UK) because the woman’s voice is easy to understand and she uses the word “MOTOR WAY” for highways and freeways, which I find charming.
While in Chicago I used smart2go to find the nearest Starbucks. Several times. I used it to find nearby places to eat, grab a snack, go shopping, and to find Levenger inside the Macys on Michigan Ave. I used it to find El stops (though usually asking a person was faster), and to help me see how far of a walk it would be to get between places (which usually meant I took a cab), and all sorts of other neat tricks.
And I’ve used navigation systems before, and handheld systems as well. They are all interesting and some are better than others, such as the Garmin nuvi line. But the idea of using such a thing on a mobile device never really appealed to me until I saw for myself just how nice it was to have, and for one really killer app that I think a lot of people forget about. I know I did.
You can send your current location to a friend, via MMS/SMS/Email, and they can trivially load that into smart2go, and come find you based on their location.
Today my subscription had expired, and all of my saved landmarks and services are there, and the existing map data is still available, so the only thing I lost appears to be the searchable services, which is fine when I know what I want anyway, or at least can look up the address. But I have to say, it is awfully nice being able to just type in “Starbucks” and find the nearest one to me. Nokia offers a variety of subscriptions for the service, but I change handsets enough that I’d probably be better off on the weekly and monthly options. I hate that every time I get a new handset I have to re-purchase software that I just bought six months ago. Developers really need to stop using the IMEI of the device to lock software. It is completely insane. Some developers will cut you a break or give you a freebie at times, but most don’t.
Now I don’t know many people with an S60 device and a GPS module. But that is something that could easily change as location-based services become more useful and attractive to people. Having solid mobile search to navigate meatspace with ease makes travel a much easier endeavor for people, and applications like Metro to help you know what form of mass transit you should be taking to get between destinations makes it a trivial task to get around in most cities.
smart2go is a fantastic application. It looks nice, has a good feel to it, and is pretty snappy though a hair slow at times. In all honesty it is probably slow, but compared to how s60 devices were a year ago, it’s hard to find fault with it today. Nokia managed to set my standards much lower than they should be with the 6600, 3650, 3660, 9500, and other handsets.
My only complaint is that when you’re traveling on foot (and you tell it so), it still gets completely spastic if you stop walking. Like, you know, at a Don’t Walk sign. It spins around all confused and trying to re-navigate paths. And when I’m on foot, I don’t need to be told that my next right is 200 yards away. Tell me when I’m about 35 yards away! But that is a pretty minor complaint when the rest of the application and use of it was so polished and easy.
Ultimately, I’m quite pleased with it. And I’m really, really looking forward to the E90. My E70 came through quite well on the trip though, and was an invaluable resource for messaging, capturing candids, and helping me find the nearest cup of cappuccino for my wife. And that alone was worth the nine bucks for the search subscription.
In case anyone at Nokia is reading this, your Chicago store stinks. The pretentious over-the-top video artwork was way overdone, and the staff was really not that familiar with your own product line. One of the people that worked there was pretty knowledgeable, but rather arrogant about it, and acted like he was selling Ferraris instead of Connecting People. I think the overall strategy of being snotty doesn’t suit you. Humanize this technology. Help people be better people. This notion of mobile-tech-as-bling isn’t becoming of you.
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