RIM has been privately testing a BlackBerry application that estimates your travel time for a few weeks, and now it’s available to the public. It’s an interesting take on turn-by-turn navigation, emphasizing more on how fast you can expect to go during particular segments of a trip than showing the usual top-down map. It will even alert you to accidents that have been reported, which is good information to have when you’ve got a schedule to keep.
This app is a part of a new location program RIM is preparing for BlackBerry developers, who will be given anonymous location data from BlackBerry users in order to determine traffic conditions and take a stab at estimated travel times. The system is all pretty much a direct result of RIM’s acquisition of Dash Navigation, whose PNDs did the exact same thing. Anyone concerned with privacy will probably not take too kindly to having their location data harvested (however anonymous) without their explicit permission, but from what I’ve seen on the BlackBerry Torch 9800, the ability to turn off such location sharing is pretty easy.
You can pick up Traffic in the App World’s Test Center at the link below.
Download Traffic for BlackBerry (Free) [App World Link]