Today is a historic day for America because you fine people are finally going to get access to Spotify. Looking to reciprocate the European gesture of good will, Google has announced that they’ll be bringing their live traffic feature in Google Maps to 13 additional countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Israel (ummm that’s not in Europe), Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Spain and Switzerland. Now if you own a car, which many Europeans do, but many also prefer to use public infrastructure since fuel prices are triple or quadruple what you pay in FreedomLand, then this is great. Combine the new traffic data with Google Navigation, currently only available on Android, and you’ve got yourself one of the most bad ass navigation devices on the market, not only able to tell you which roads to avoid, but also be able to locate points of interest and even give them a ring should you want to make a reservation.
To give Nokia some credit, they were the first to do this. Google may have been the first to make turn by turn navigation a free feature, but it didn’t take Nokia long to issue a press release saying that all future Symbian devices, and many current Symbian devices out on the market, would get turn by turn as well. Traffic data has been in Ovi Maps, now called Nokia Maps, for ages now, although it’s only now “live” with version 3.08, whereas before you’d get a snapshot of current traffic conditions once you hit the navigate button, but said snapshot wouldn’t be updated as you were on your merry way. Anyway, we’re just pointing out minor niggles at this point.
Besides navigation apps, what else do you use while road tripping? Hopefully you’re not checking your Facebook and Twitter networks while driving, but in all seriousness, when on the road is there an app you can’t live without? Drop a comment below, we’re interested to know, especially since many of us are soon going on holiday!