The app has always directed users to the fastest route. But until today, what constitutes "fastest" has been based on the distance and on expected traffic - but not on the actual road conditions.

Users won't need to do anything special in order to trigger the new directions, which will be active in North America and Europe where both Navigation and real-time traffic data are available.

Google says that more than 35 million miles are driven by Navigation users daily, and touts the new feature as a massive "time saved."

But Google does caution that these alternative routes might not turn out to be any faster. "Keep in mind," Google says, "that we can't guarantee that Navigation will be able to find a faster way." But if you're like me, the act of driving around traffic always feels faster than just sitting in it.

As you can see, the app quite skillfully places the directions on the live video of the road, but the size of the path and arrow still leaves a large blind area for drivers. You can also see the directions jitter a bit when the car is in a tunnel, a problem with the GPS signal weakening in the tunnel. What this also tells us is that the app is not yet able to take advantage of the live video feed as much as it would like to.

Due to platform limitations, the app cannot digest the live video and map the directions more accurately to the road. While it does a fair job of guessing where the road is, the ability to process the road and run it through image recognition technology would make it much more accurate. Mobilizy says they are working on an iPhone version of the app as well - a platform that will soon support live video processing with an upcoming OS update.

With Wikitude Drive, users can quickly switch to a traditional elevated 3D map view by touching the screen, but which perspective will drivers use? Depending on the price of the app, Android users may download the app for the basic directions to save some money. The other common concern with these apps is what happens when a phone call comes in while providing directions? Can users easily answer and call and continue to receive directions? Or will they be interrupted and forced to later relaunch the application?

Either way, Wikitude Drive seems like a great use of augmented reality and a logical next step for the platform. Mobilizy says it plans to integrate the Wikitude World Browser, and it's database full of points-of-interest, into Wikitude Drive in the future. Combine this type of direction capability with GM's idea for an augmented reality windshield and a fascinating future of cars with heads-up-displays could be just around the corner.

Skobbler has been testing the application in several states in the last few weeks and has reportedly found the OpenStreetMap data quite good. OSM is a collaborative, crowdsourced project to map the world from the ground up, using volunteers and an emphasis on open-source presentation and rendering.

Skobbler had jettisoned NAVTEQ data and debuted with OSM in Germany in March. After a rocky start it has found its way into the top ten downloads in the German iTunes store.

"Skobbler is using consumer feedbacks (reporting is integrated into the application) and the GPS tracks generated by users to improve the map data in co-operation with OSM volunteers," according to GPS Business News's Ludovic Privat.

Says Hellmis, "That's one of the advantages of developing from a mobile device background. We're aware of the consumer's resources. You don't wait to download your maps on a wireless connection and you don't need a sim card. You've got the entire world in your pocket rather than on a server."This sort of functionality is particularly useful for those who travel frequently and are used to suffering from high data connection costs and unstable network coverage. The service also includes information on safety cameras, speed warnings and pedestrian shortcuts, in addition to 6,000 3D landmarks.

Ovi Maps' voice navigation is immediately available for download on 10 handsets including the Nokia N97 mini, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and Nokia E72 at nokia.com/maps. Additional phones will be added in the coming months. The fact that Nokia's handsets account for 51% (83 million) of the total number of GPS-enabled devices shipped last year, means that the company may quickly be the world's largest navigation services provider.

Just a few days ago, Mobilizy also released the latest version of its Wikitude World Browser augmented reality (AR) app for Android phones. As the company's press release notes, Wikitude is Mobilizy's flagship product, but the company sees navigation as "part of a natural evolutionary process within the field of mobile AR to help people get around in the world."

As with so many of these applications, the best way to get a good feel for them is to watch a video:

Mobilizy's CEO Philipp Breuss-Schneeweis argues that there is "huge" potential for location-based advertising. If you are on a long-distance drive, for example, and your GPS tells you that there is a restaurant nearby that offers a discount to weary travelers, you might just stop there to get a bite.

There can be no doubt that augmented reality apps are pretty hot right now, and this is the second AR app we have seen this week that deals with traffic. Another enterprising developer showed a preview of an app yesterday that can display the traffic situation around you, depending on where you point your Android phone.

Perhaps the secret to AccuTerra is that Intermap's key business is not iPhone applications at all, but rather, aerial mapping. In the past, Magellan GPS and the US government have partnered with the company to utilize their 3D map data. And mapping in this world is no easy feat. To collect more than 3 million square miles of high-resolution 3D map data, the company didn't ping a satellite. Their work involved developing new mapping technology and deploying more than 2,530 aircraft over U.S. airspace for more than 10,000 hours of airtime. Imagine that paperwork. Still, the company believes your safety is well worth the effort.

Even in a storm far from a wireless connection, hikers can use AccuTerra to see their distance from warming huts and roads, routes around river beds, and most importantly, the terrain. While the app's ability to create and share annotated hiking tours with geo-tagged photos is interesting, it's the offline maps that make this application a solid survival tool. AccuTerra plans to sell state park maps at $1.99 each and national park maps at $2.99 each in the app store; however, for WWDC attendees, Intermap released free maps of Yosemite National Park and the SF Bay Area including Muir Woods and Mt. Tamalpais. If you're in the Bay, download the maps and geocache us some beer.

The Information Valet Project

As more and more newspapers crumble, there is concern that we will lose major sources of vital news and information. The threat of online news, which is both abundant and free, has turned this industry on its head, forcing companies to come up with new models for making money. But which of those models will end up working is anyone's guess at this point. Some models are attempting to use crowdsourcing to pay reporters' salaries, while other companies are finding their niche as hyper-local sources of information. The new Information Valet project aims to do both and more.

With the Information Valet Project, paying customers wouldn't just get a simple web page dedicated to news. Instead, the project would deliver "a 24/7 platform-agnostic nerve center that finds, organizes, shares, and makes sense of information from a vast array of paid, volunteer, independent, and partisan sources - and then serves it how you want, when you want it."

What makes this project different than any ol' customizable web portal like iGoogle or My Yahoo, will be the way you pay for its services with your attention. In addition to the small monthly fee, the service would manage your attention to deliver premium content. So for example, when you look at an ad, that would create a payment that would be credited to an account where it will go to offset your purchase of premium content later on. This model effectively makes attention the currency with which you make your purchases./

In addition, the Information Valet will offer a one-stop shop of sorts for all your web registrations across the web and a safe and secure place where your privacy is protected.

So, It Does What Exactly?

If you're confused as to how this project is anything new or different than the news offerings out there today, you're not alone. There are so many different pieces to the project, it's kind of hard to get a grip on what exactly it is. The best explanation we found so far comes from Martin Langeveld, who described the various aspects of the Info Valet project as follows:

Content consumers/web users:

• Would register their personal data via InfoValet and would, in a secure system, retain complete control over who could access that information.
• By doing this, they would also gain the convenience and security of not having to enter a raft of data over and over each time they register at another site to access information or make purchases. Their personal information would reside in only one place on the web.
• In return for allowing selective access to their personal data, they would gain two important benefits: (1) access to information more tailored to their demographics, needs and interests, and (2) a system of rewards in the form of cash or points based on their web usage and exposure to advertising content. These rewards would be greater if they are willing to share, selectively, a larger amount of personal information with advertisers for targeting purposes.

Content providers including newspaper web sites:

• Would act as portals through which content consumers initially sign up for InfoValet. As such they could gain a share of future transactions, including ad-viewing rewards, associated with individuals they have signed up--even when those users are elsewhere on the web.
• Would be able to sell and host advertising targeted more precisely at site visitors by means of InfoValet registrations

Commercial content providers/advertisers:

• Would benefit from more efficient, better targeted ways of advertising to InfoValet registered consumers, published through "trusted nodes"--local brands through which consumers have signed up for infoValet
• Could send new, more welcome forms of commercial content to InfoValet consumers

Could This Work?

For something like this to succeed it will take a good bit of effort. Internet users are used to information being free, and will balk at the idea of having to pay for it. The additional services that make this project compelling and valuable will also have to be easy for the average internet user to understand, and - let's face it - we're not there yet. However, as news giant Rupert Murdoch recently stated, the future of newspapers goes beyond dead trees. In other words, now may not be the time to summarily dismiss new ideas such as this without first giving them some serious thought. The current business model for newspapers may not be working, but we've yet to develop what the next model may be. Could this be it? We'll have to wait and see, but at the moment it looks like an uphill battle.

You can learn more about the Information Valet project here, read the summary PDF, or view the PowerPoint.

• Profiles
• Relationships
• Activities
• Business Models

Profiles: A Universal Identity

Like most of us, Charlene has literally dozens of identities online (see slide below).

Moving forward she'd like to see a universal identity. Her specific proposal centers on either email and/or mobile phones, since this would be an identity she controls. Thankfully, Charlene also anticipates a federated approach (such as OpenID.) Also, she anticipates a few major players will probably serve as major federation focus points. We have already seen this happen begin to happen with both AOL and Yahoo! supporting OpenID.

Charlene also talked about the "Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web," a document created by a number of thought leaders in the social web: Joseph Smarr, Marc Canter, Robert Scoble & Michael Arrington. The document states:

We publicly assert that all users of the social web are entitled to certain fundamental rights, specifically:

• Ownership of their own personal information, including:
• their own profile data
• the list of people they are connected to
• the activity stream of content they create;
• Control of whether and how such personal information is shared with others; and
• Freedom to grant persistent access to their personal information to trusted external sites.

I imagine there will be more conversation on this in the afternoon panel Dan Farber is moderating on Data Portability.

Relationships: A Single Social Graph

Over the next few years, Charlene pointed out that a unified social graph will develop. She showed her current social graph as it exists inside Facebook, and then pointed out what it was missing: colleagues, parents, extended family, school parents, neighbors (see slide below). I think this is something we all realize intuitively - so the overriding point is that our real social graph is far more complex.

New 'Entrants' Will Be Portals

I actually found this one of the more interesting points from Charlene's presentation. She proposed that the a number of 'new entrants' will emerge, except that they won't be startups at all. Instead, she predicts that a number of the major portals (Google, Microsoft Live, Yahoo!, and AOL) will actually fill the the relationship mapping gap. She pointed to 4 reasons why they are natural entrants:

1. Millions of Regular Users
2. Search & Deep Content
3. Ad & Content Networks
4. Relationship Maps

Activities: Social Context for Activities

Going back to 'social networks being like air', not surprisingly Charlene projects that social context will be important for most online activities. As an example of how this might happen, she used shopping. She talked about Amazon integrating with Facebook (or any other repository of social graph info) such that they could highlight book reviews from her friends. Charlene also pointed out that any portal could easily incorporate social data into their site. She used Yahoo! as an example saying they could:

1. Search based on what my friends find relevant
2. Elevate stories tagged by my friends -- anywhere (maybe multiple social graphs web 2.0 & shopping)
3. Compare daily portfolio performance to friends
4. In terms of advertising, which of my friends owns a Focus & what do they think of it?

Business Models: Social Influence Defines Marketing Value

When talking about business models, her basic point was that we have yet to properly value networks based on their social value. She pointed to Marian Salzman's (of JWT) concept of personal CPMs. The basic idea being that an individual's authority on specific topics plus their network's interest and authority on the topic, results in a value of reaching that user. If this is true then "social networks will have to compete to have the best experience for high influence people."

Conclusion

Based on the vision she laid out, Charlene ended with a map of how open she anticipated these open platforms evolving.

To realize this vision of ubiquitous social networks, Charlene pointed out 2 things that must happen:

1. We need the technology to evolve, which she wasn't that worried about
2. We need to increase trust, which she challenged the industry to think about

You can view all of Charlene's Slides here.

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