TeleNav - Another way to get around by cellphone
Speaking of using cellphones to get around, Mike Langberg of the San Jose Mercury News played with TeleNav, a new GPS navigation service from a company called Televigation that you can use with Nextel phones:
I borrowed a Motorola i730 phone operating on Nextel's network from Televigation, and started driving familiar routes around town — from home to office, from supermarket to home, from office to appointments. You enter the street address of your destination either by picking out letters with the keypad or by calling Televigation and using its computer voice-recognition system. Best of all, you can go to the Web page of your TeleNav account before starting a trip and enter the destination with your computer's keyboard. The i730, attached to one end of a footlong flexible arm hanging off the windshield from a suction cup, never failed to know its exact location and gave me accurate turn-by-turn directions on how to reach my destinations. Route information was displayed on the i730's small color screen, with a large left or right arrow to indicate upcoming turns. The data included the direction I was traveling, the distance to the next turn and the total remaining distance for the trip. I know now my commute to work is exactly 14 miles.
Cellphones that can tell you where you are can also be used by other people to track your movements, and Mike makes the obligatory noise about the potential these things have for invading people's privacy.
