Manthan

It was in November on a 2500 Miles road trip, we fully realized the utility of a GPS device and how it could b a great medium to push local advertisement. Once we started using GPS devices, we stopped visiting Yahoo Maps or Google maps and they were totally irrelevant to our pre-trip planning. No more printouts and worries about missed exits. With GPS devices touching sub-$500 prices, I had imagined GPS companies will team up with the likes of Yahoo or Google to provide navigational aid on the road. This could be a great medium to provide location specific local ads.

Some of the problems with current generation GPS devices are

1. They are basically stand alone devices, with no connectivity to the internet.
2. Since they rely on local storage, there is limited amount of information on these devices.
3. There is no simple way to update the data on a daily basis and we have to wait for companies like Navteq ( Who supply the mapping data ) to update their database
4. It would be great if the GPS could get some real time data like weather of the destination, traffic accidents, repair work etc, so drivers could avoid certain roads and reach quicker.

Yahoo and Dash announced a partnership, whereby Dash users can use Yahoo Local to search for location specific queries, like pizza or atm in the vicinity. While this appears to be a very exciting development, there is no mention of “Internet Connectivity” details for Dash Navigation system. Looks like the system connects over WIFI, but then its totally useless since these advanced features can only be used in places where there is WIFI connection. There is no word on local advertisements either in the press release.

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