That Nokia event I liveblogged Thursday morning? The cryptic invitation made it look like it might involve some major new product, which it didn’t. But it did bring some good news: The company is bringing free GPS navigation–for drivers, pedestrians, and takers of public transportation–to users of its Symbian-based smartphones. The navigation offering covers 74 countries, and lets you download the necessary maps onto your phone so you don’t need a live Internet connection to route your trip–a particularly useful feature if you’re roaming in another country where you don’t have all-you-can-eat data.

The Symbian user interface still has some odd, outdated artifacts–you must scroll through lists with Windows-like scrollbars, not by merely swiping the list itself–but the OVI Maps application looks full-featured and fun. Pedestrians get some particularly nice features, such as shortcuts that drivers can’t take, and there are 3D models of landmarks.

The no-cost navigation is an obvious rejoinder to Google’s version of Google Maps for Android–as seen on the Droid and Nexus One–which also includes navigation with spoken turn-by-turn directions for free. Let’s hope everybody else in the smartphone biz feels like they need to match the Nokia and Google freebies…

I kinda doubt that I’ll ever own an Audi A8–I’m still perfectly pleased with my 2004 Mazda 3. But the new A8 does have an option I’d kill for: built-in Google Earth.

GPS kingpin TomTom, which released its much-awaited iPhone version back in August for $99.99, has a new version out today for $49.99. The difference? The original edition (which remains available) covered the U.S. and Canada, and the new one is U.S.-only. It may not technically qualify as a price cut, since you get less for your money. But it does feel like a telling reaction to the extreme price sensitivity in iPhone appland, as well as the arrival of cheap GPS apps such as MotionX ($3.99 to buy, then $3.99 for any month when you use it).

Next question: What happens to TomTom and Navigon and AT&T and Networks and Motion and even MotionX if Google brings its free version of Google Maps with turn-by-turn directions from Android to the iPhone?

Among the bevy of interesting things about Verizon’s Droid smartphone is Android 2.0′s new version of Google Maps, which includes full-blown turn-by-turn GPS navigation with spoken instructions–for free. Judging from the couple of trips around San Francisco it’s guided me on so far, it would be pretty darn appealing even if it wasn’t a freebie–the directions worked, it speaks the names of streets in a crisper voice than AT&T Navigator sports on the iPhone, and I like the way it switches to a Street View photo once you’ve arrived at your destination.

Google says it’s working on bringing the new version of Maps to other devices. If it does, for-pay navigation applications will have to be radically better to compete, which is bad news indeed for all the companies charging for smartphone navigation apps–and probably even worse news for those who sell stand-alone handheld navigation devices. People are already spreading doom and gloom about the future of navigation stalwarts such as TomTom and Garmin.

There’s at least one form of dedicated navigation hardware that I hope doesn’t vanish: built-in car systems, which have nice big screens and, in some cases, user interfaces better designed for on-the-go use. And pilots, sailors, and other specialists will still want their customized GPS devices. But if we all get navigation that’s 90 percent as good as the best stuff out there for 0 percent of the price, it’s hard to see how many folks will justify paying for another gadget–especially one that may carry a monthly service charge.

Your take on the fate of GPS hardware, please:

TomTom’s long-awaited–relatively speaking–GPS navigation software for the iPhone is now available on Apple’s App Store. It’s $99.99 for a version that includes maps for the U.S., Puerto Rico, and Canada–pricey for an iPhone app (and almost three times as much as CoPilot Live, which I haven’t tried yet) but not outrageous given the extreme usefulness of turn-by-turn driving directions.

This isn’t a full-blown review, but I’ve been using TomTom for a few quick trips around my neighborhood, and so far I’ve found it far less appealing than AT&T’s Navigator (a $10-a-month iPhone service powered by TeleNav)–even though the two products are comparable in many ways and TomTom is packed with worthwhile features.

That’s for two basic reasons:

A) TomTom offers spoken directions available in multiple languages with a variety of voices in both genders with a variety of accents. They sound nice and crisp. But so far in my trips, they’ve never spoken the names of roads–not even major highways, let alone neighborhood streets. Navigator offers only one voice (plus a Spanish-language option) and it sounds pretty muffled even over my car stereo. But when it tells me to turn, it mentions the street by name. Every time so far.

B) When TomTom wants to give me a heads up that I’ll need to do something before long, it specifies distances in yards. Odometers, most road signs, and my brain all use fractions of miles. And so does Navigator.

Between the lack of spoken road names and the frequent references to yardage, I’m finding it mighty tough to follow TomTom’s directions through the audio instructions alone; I have to glance at the iPhone a lot, and even then it’s not always clear what TomTom wants me to do. With Navigator, by contrast, it’s pretty easy to keep on track simply by following the spoken directions.

Other notable differences between the two packages relate to the fact that TomTom is an app-plus-maps package sold at a flat price, while Navigator is a service that downloads maps and other info as you need them. TomTom occupies a hefty 1.2GB of space on your iPhone, works even if you don’t have a data connection, and doesn’t offer live traffic info. (Maybe the company will offer traffic data as an optional service–it’s available for its hardware devices.)

Navigator, by contrast only uses 3.2MB of memory on your phone but requires a working data connection. And it does offer live traffic info–a feature which helps to justify the monthly fee.

Both Navigator and TomTom have done a good job of keeping pace with my wanderings via the iPhone’s built-in GPS so far, but I’m still intrigued by TomTom’s car kit, which builds more powerful external GPS into a mounting bracket. TomTom doesn’t seem to have announced the price for this optional accessory yet.

Bottom line for now? I’ll take Navigator over TomTom for now, but I’m still looking for my dream iPhone GPS solution, and want to check out other available options. Are you using an iPhone for GPS? Any recommendations?

After the jump, a couple of TomTom screens.

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For ninety-nine cents, iPhone users can download an app called Offender Locator to locate sexual offenders in their vicinity. You might be surprised what you learn, even if you’re not personally worried about sex offenders at the moment.

Offender Locator was reviewed on TechCrunch today. The app has become one of the top ten paid offerings in iPhone store despite the fact that the same information has already been available on the Web for some time.

Offender Locator leverages the iPhone’s built-in GPS to locate local U.S. sex offenders, or alternatively, users can input an address manually. I installed it out of curiosity about how many offenders were listed around me in Manhattan. The GPS function did not work, so I entered in my mother’s address.

Lo and behold, the first result was someone that I knew. It was a neighborhood man who used to idle his car and chat with me at the corner while I waited for the bus to come and take me to my junior high (I had seen him around while I was jogging after school). My mother always told me not to take him up on his offer to “learn how to play pool” at his house, and her instincts were prescient.

With this app, she could have validated her concern, and altered other neighbors about the man’s unusually attentive behavior toward a minor.

My take is that making it easier for a parent or guardian to access information that can protect a child is a good thing–even if a nominal fee is included. It is worth nothing that selling people’s personal information can run afoul of some state laws.

Google’s Latitude–which lets you use your phone to share your location with friends–has finally debuted on the iPhone, months after it showed up for Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile. On the iPhone, it’s a Safari-based Web app rather than an iPhone app. But it’s apparently only a Web app because Apple was unhappy with the native app that Google developed. “We worked closely with Apple to bring Latitude to the iPhone in a way Apple thought would be best for iPhone users,” says the Google blog post announcing the iPhone version. “After we developed a Latitude application for the iPhone, Apple requested we release Latitude as a web application in order to avoid confusion with Maps on the iPhone, which uses Google to serve maps tiles.”

Of course, this is the iPhone we’re talking about, so Apple’s requests aren’t really requests; if it had a problem with the native version of Latitude, it would presumably never the the light of day in the App Store. I’m not entirely clear on why Apple believed that Latitude would confuse iPhone owners, since Apple not only permits other mapping-related apps to be distributed on the App Store but encourages their creation by helping developers embed maps in their wares. And Latitude’s functionality is almost completely unrelated to what you get in Apple’s Maps app.

Also, iPhone owners aren’t dummies, and at least some of us would rather risk the possibility of being confused in return for the possibility of being pleased by a useful new app.

That said, the Web-based version of Latitude is impressive stuff. Google builds some of the best iPhone Web apps there are–like its iPhone-ized version of Gmail–and it’s hard to imagine that a native iPhone version would be much better than what it’s done in Safari. Latitude for the iPhone has one fundamental limitation that the other versions don’t: It can’t broadcast your location to your buddies unless you’re running the app. But it would have to deal with that even it were a native iPhone application, since Apple doesn’t permit third-party software to run in the background. (If the company doesn’t loosen up the multitasking limitations, maybe it can add some sort of ability for a GPS-related app to continue to send your location even when it’s not running, akin to the Push Notifications the iPhone already has.)

In the long run, apps like Latitude and Glympse might end up being features in a program like the iPhone’s Maps, not standalone software. For now, though, I want them to flourish–and I’m sorry that Apple thinks they’d befuddle us, and that its monopoly on distribution of iPhone apps means its gut check on such matters is gospel.

One by one, the big names in GPS navigation are landing on the iPhone, thanks to iPhone OS 3.0′s support for turn-by-turn directions. Last month, AT&T released a navigation service powered by TeleNav. And today, Germany’s Navigon announced that the North America. version of its MobileNavigator is available on Apple’s App Store.

AT&T’s Navigator costs $10 a month and downloads maps as needed; MobileNavigator is selling for a flat cost of $99.99 ($69.99 until August 15th) and comes with a full set of maps. I haven’t tried it yet, but the idea of paying once for unlimited use is mighty appealing.

TomTom’s iPhone app is the most eagerly-anticipated GPS system for the iPhone–in part because it’s the one that was demonstrated at Apple’s WWDC keynote–and you might want to wait until it’s available before you plunk down your money for any GPS software. But one way or another, I’ll bet that lots of iPhone owners end up letting their phones tell them how to drive.

Here’s a video demo from Navigon:

The iPhone 3.0 app goodness continues  roll in. An iPhone version of AT&T’s Navigator turn-by-turn GPS driving directions app is live in Apple’s App Store. It’s one of several navigation apps that have already appeared in the week since iPhone OS 3.0′s arrival. (The most eagerly-awaited one, though, is probably from TomTom–and it’s not due until later this summer.)

Navigator is powered by GPS stalwart TeleNav, and worked reasonably well as I used it on my iPhone 3GS while tooling around the Bay Area today. I was worried that it might not work as well as a dedicated GPS handheld, since early scuttlebutt had it that the iPhone 3G had a wimpy antenna. (I spent $150 on TomTom’s Windows Mobile version for my AT&T Tilt phone, and while the software was great the Tilt wasn’t much better at figuring out where it was than I am. And I have a cruddy sense of direction.)

Navigator had no problem keeping up with me even at 60mph. It has decent search for addresses and businesses, live traffic updates, and a bunch of other features that my current GPS system (a five-year-old one built into my Mazda3) lacks. However, it works only in portrait mode as far as I can tell–I wish it also offered a more windshield-mimicking landscape view. And the quality of its spoken directions was surprisingly muffled, which occasionally left me straining to understand them.

If you’re serious about using Navigator or any other GPS application for the iPhone, there’s no doubt that you’re going to want some sort of mounting system that pumps its audio through your car’s stereo and provides power–otherwise, the phone will be too hard to see and too hard to hear, and its battery will be drained in a jffy. Devices of that sort already exist, and TomTom plans to sell one as an option for its software.

AT&T being AT&T, it’s selling Navigator as a service, not a program–typical for phone GPS (although one of the benefits of getting the Palm Pre and paying for Sprint’s $99 voice and data plan is that it comes with driving directions). Navigator is $9.99 a month. I’d really like the option of paying a one-time fee. (Especially since I’m most likely to need this software when I’m on the road for business or pleasure in a rent-a-car.)

Bottom line: Navigator’s not bad, but I’ll wait until TomTom’s out before I decide which GPS application will live on my iPhone.  After the jump, a few screens of the AT&T product in action.

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The Air Force has begun work to allay fears of GPS system failure following a GAO report last week that the system stands a risk of deteriorating starting in 2010. In a scheduled online forum over Twitter on the topic, the armed services branch said in no uncertain terms that GPS is not going anywhere.

“No, the GPS will not go down. GAO points out, there is potential risk associated with a degradation in GPS performance,”Col. Dave Buckman, AFSPC command lead for Position, Navigation and Timing said over Twitter.

Buckman continued by saying that he agreed with the agency that there was risk of performance issues, however the Air Force Space Command was indeed working to prevent any disruptions.

GAO officials have charged that budget overruns and a lack of oversight has put the system at risk. It’s apparent that the report stung hard enough that officials overseeing our system felt the need to respond to it.

“We definitely need to keep this in perspective . Since 1995, GPS has never failed to exceed performance standards,” Buckman argued.

I agree with the Air Force’s assessment. While cost overruns and oversight issues are handicapping the upgrades to a aging system, the GAO’s report came across as a little too much Chicken Little.

At the same time, its a lesson in government accountability that hopefully our new president is going to correct.

How many times in your life have you called someone to tell him or her where you were–or to admit that you had no idea where you were? If your sense of direction is as lousy as mine, the answer is “lots.” Glympse, a free new application for GPS-enabled smartphones launched this week at the Where 2.0 conference in San Jose, aims to provide a simpler way to clue people into your location than craning your neck for street signs or local landmarks while you’re on the phone.

Conceptually, Glympse couldn’t be much simpler: The app locates you on a map, then lets you send a message via SMS or e-mail to anyone in your address book, with a brief customizable note from you and a link to an online map showing where the heck you are. You can optionally also mark your destination on the map.

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The GPS system is beginning to show its age, and like some of the elderly among us, may begin losing its way beginning in 2010. This is due to the aging of the satellies themselves, some of which have been in operation for close to 20 years.

According to the Government Accountability Office, the Air Force is beginning to fall behind in targets to replace aging equipment. Part of this has to do with the fact that some of these projects have not had decent oversight, while others have gone well over budget.

The next scheduled lauch of a GPS satellite is in November. This would be more than three years behind schedule, the GAO reports. According to its research, the probability of keeping all 24 satellites in the air drops below 95 percent next year, and down to 80 percent in the following two years. If these problems continue long term, the probability of a a fully-functional GPS system in 2017 is only 10 percent.

As these satellites fail, GPS will become less and less accurate as a result.

What may need to be looked at now is international cooperation. The EU is busy building Galileo, and Russia and China are also working on their own GPS system.

Of course, since GPS has a military use as well, the US Government may not be all too excited to let overseas systems in. However, if we can’t fix our own problems here, it may be the only viable option.

Never assume RIM is toast:

BlackBerry Curve outells the iPhone.

Two trends conspiring against Microsoft.

11.6″ EeePC on its way.

Navigon exits North American market.

“Houdini’s” a great phone name.

MySpace formulates its turnaround strategy.

Myst for iPhone: It’s humongous!

WiiMotion Plus on sale.

The White House gets social.

The world’s lamest cell phones.

GigaOM has published an interesting read about how Apple’s iPhone has driven demand for location-based services. The rise of these services was inevitable, but now there need to be recognized, accepted practices about what they can and can’t do.

A few years ago, I changed a setting on my Nokia to avoid commercial SMS messages. I did that as a precaution after I read a magazine article about how my local Starbucks could send me a coupon as I passed by on the street. That never came to be, but it’s looking more probable now.

Many of my friends have iPhones, and I was compelled to install the location-aware social networking app Loopt after a friend told about how great it was over the holidays. It’s still installed onto my phone, but I’m glad that it only updates itself when I invoke the application and want my location to be known. The AroundMe application can be useful for locating local points of interests, and again, it is not evasive.

However, it’s only a matter of time until application makers begin to get more creative with their terms of use. The possibility of an advertisement-subsidized phones also exists.

It might be my imagination running wild, but picture walking by an electronic billboard that upon detecting your presence, notes that you ate five Papa John’s pizzas last week to all passers by. (Note: When I told Harry I was working on this post, he told me that he was spammed via Bluetooth by a Land Rover billboard in Times Square back in 2006.) Or, an inbox full of solicitations appearing after walking through a busy marketplace.

Worse still, tech-savvy criminals could crack the data stream of location aware application to target users above a certain income level. That might sound far fetched, but is information that these services send up into the cloud even encrypted?

Customer feedback (and distaste) for services that sap away privacy might be enough, but I feel that stakeholders including advertisers and phone makers need appropriate guidelines before there is misuse.

Dash Navigation has announced that it’s going to stop selling the Dash Express, its clever, well-reviewed Web-enabled GPS unit. Instead, it’ll focus on licensing its technology to manufacturers of other gadgets–in-dash navigation systems, smartphones, netbooks, and the like–and it will cut its staff (reportedly by two thirds) to reflect its new direction.

For a company that helps people figure out how to get where they’re going, Dash had trouble charting its own course: Dash Express only started shipping in March, and so never had a chance to succeed. (It didn’t even make it to its first holiday season.) Even if Dash Navigation’s plans always involved licensing its technology and its own gadget existed mostly to demo the idea’s value–and I’ll bet that was the game plan all along–I can’t imagine it intended to get out of the hardware business after eight months.

On one level, this is sad news: Dash Express was an impressive product, and if I didn’t own a car with built-in GPS, I’d probably buy one. (Those that did buy the device should be okay: Dash says the service will continue.) But long term, I think that the company is doing the right thing, even if it’s doing it more hastily than it expected.

We’re pretty clearly in the waning days of the era of multiple gadgets, in which a rational person might buy and tote a phone, a GPS unit, a media player, a digital still camera, a video camera, an e-book reader, and maybe even another pocketable gizmo or two. Much of this functionality will merge into smart phones like the iPhone; some of it will be wired into cars via automotive computing platforms like Ford Sync. It hasn’t all happened yet, but most of it surely will over the next few years.

(At the moment, the digital camera seems like the device least likely to be replaced by the phone…and I can’t imagine point-and-shoots disappearing entirely anytime soon. But I betcha that the best camera-phone cameras will get surprisingly good surprisingly soon.)

Bottom line: I think the future will see fewer successful makers of hardware–especially small ones, like Dash Networks–but will have plenty of room for smart software and service companies. And even though I now know I’ll never own a Dash Express, I hold out hope of using the Dash technology in some form someday…

My time at the IFA electronics show is winding down, but I’m still catching up on reporting back here on everything I’ve seen on the show floor. Herewith, a few more items…

Beko had a booth full of pretty generic looking TVs and other products, but in a world chock-full of electronics companies with pompous taglines, liked its slogan: “Buy It Before It Becomes Famous”:

American domestic robot manufacturer Ugobe wasn’t just at the show with its Pleo dinosaur–it brought along a cool giant-sized Pleo:

IFA isn’t as thick with booth entertainment as an American show like U.S., but it wasn’t entirely devoid of it, either. I never quite figured out what a company called 2DF did, but its giant walkaround mascot was downright adorable:

Becker had an in-dash navigation system called the Indianapolis Pro–and while I assume it refers to the Indy 500, it was still startling and entertaining to see a German product named after a midwestern American city: