Monthly Archives: December 2010

OK, that’s it for me until after Christmas. It’s time to spend some serious fun time with my kids and I intend to spend as much time away from the computer as possible, I mean it this year:)

Thanks to all of you who have helped out recently and I hope you all have a wonderful time over the holidays with the people you want to be with.

There will be a QOTD up on Christmas day should you find yourself near a computer- feel free to let us know what you received and what the day means to you. Thanks again, will be back on 29th December…

This article over at VentureBeat got me thinking about 2010 and there is a lot of truth in the argument that the BIG happenings in the mobile industry were all centred around Apple and Android.

The best are noted as the iPad, growing Android adoption, the iPhone 4, Samsung’s Android adventures, front facing cameras and Windows Phone 7.

The worst are Microsoft’s KIN, the withdrawal of the Courier digital journal, iPhone 4 design issues and HP doing little so far with Palm.

Outside of Windows Phone 7, it is hard to come up with significant developments from the likes of RIM, Nokia and Palm and that is a real shame. Here’s hoping that things change in 2011.

The science of monitoring and predicting traffic movements is incredibly difficult. I realise this and so do most people, but it seems as though the companies that continue to sell traffic packages with GPS software don’t.

The ’2 minute’ delay above turned out to be a minimum of 1.5 hours, and likely much longer for those that stayed in the queue.

I received a press release from TomTom the other day which included this paragraph- “TomTom HD Traffic: It’s officially the quickest way through the traffic.  With more accurate traffic info, wider coverage, and up to seven times more updates than anyone else, independent tests prove HD Traffic is the best way to beat the jams.”

I use TomTom HD Traffic and 2 weeks ago I got stuck for 2 hours because TomTom HD Traffic did not realise that the M3 was closed following a bad accident. The fact that the queues were miles long also was not noticed by the service.

Last Friday we had some very quick and heavy snow which caused multiple driving problems. I left work at 4pm and after trying to get through a village I had to turn back and take the A24. There I waited for 1.5 hours and in that time I moved 200 yards. TomTom Traffic HD was advising that there was a ‘2 minute’ delay. Eventually I gave up, did a U-turn and decided to try driving through another village. This worked and I was on the clear roads home, at least according to TomTom Traffic HD. It popped up a 2 minute delay which only took me a further 2 hours to get through.

The worrying part is that TomTom Traffic is by far the best traffic monitoring system I have used to date and makes the Co-Pilot offering look shameful, but when something major happens it seems to struggle. It deals with small delays perfectly and even minor inconveniences in busy towns are seen immediately, but when things go badly wrong, as has happened a few times now, the service just doesn’t seem to react and I end up sat there like a lemon wondering when my life will resume.

It seems to me that GPS traffic monitoring systems work best when there is no traffic.

Today comment of the day comes from Jah- “Nokia should either support one OS or all OSs (Android, MeeGo, Windows Phone 7, Symbian etc).  Switching between OSs must be wasteful (Maemo to MeeGo).  Nokia wanted to be a content provider, so would make sense to make phones for all OSs and focus on content delivery.”