Cingular/AT&T (NYSE: T) has announced that its customers with BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) 8800, Pearl, 8700c and the new BlackBerry Curve can now access to traffic information and rerouting services through TeleNav Traffic.

The new service is designed to help AT&T customers get they way around the city traffic, by alerting them through voice and on-screen prompts to traffic slowdowns and incidents along their programmed travel route — and by providing them with an alternative routes. Read the full article »

Sprint (NYSE: S) today begins offering Slifter, a GPS-enabled mobile search application/service that allows consumers to use cellphones to find products in retail stores. Based on the GPS signal, consumers can easily search through 65 million products at 30,000 store locations and find out where they can buy certain products and at what price. Next, once the desired product has been found, users make shopping list, which later they can share with friends via text messages.

Alex Muller, founder and CEO of GPShopper, the company that develops Slifter, said that through the connection with Sprint, “many people will say, ‘Gone are the days where I have to drive from store to store to find what I need.’ ” Using cellphones, he said, they’ll discover “there’s a place just around the corner that has the product in stock.”

The Slifter costs $1.99 a month, and is available to all Sprint subscribers with data plans. (via: wsj)

Interactive conglomerate IAC announced the launch of Ask Mobile GPS, a GPS-enabled lifestyle application featuring the best of Ask.com, Citysearch, and Evite.com, along with instant location finder and turn-by-turn navigation powered. This is the first application/service that will combine local content, social networking and GPS navigation.

“With Ask Mobile GPS, your cell phone is like the remote control for your life. With the bundling of GPS with our lifestyle brands, your phone knows exactly where you are, so there’s far less hunt-and-peck entering of information on the keypad when you’re out and about,” said Jim Lanzone, CEO of Ask.com. “We’ve adapted our brands specifically for mobile phones — we’re not force-fitting content that should be read on a computer screen onto a cell phone.”

Google has launched the UK-specific version of its popular Java mobile app – Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Maps mobile. Users in Britain can now see Tube stations, and use the local search. If you have a Java-enabled handset (almost all new phones support Java), you can download the UK version of Google Maps mobile from google.co.uk/gmm.

In the other news, Google finally added support for GPS to the latest version (v1.5.1) of Google Maps mobile. In the application press “0″ to quickly pin-point your location with a blue dot. Originally, Google promoted this feature as being exclusive for the Helio Drift. Now they’ve quietly released an update that should work on all major platforms. (via: Crave, WebWorkerDaily)

Mexens Technology announced the availability of Navizon on Blackberry (NSDQ: RIMM) devices. Users that are not familiar with Navizon should know that this software allows them to:

• see where they are on a map and easily find their way to their next destination
• see the whereabouts of their friends or coworkers right from their mobile device
• search for bars or restaurants right around where they are

Navizon’s main strength is that it doesn’t require a GPS to provide location based services. Read the full article »

Disney Mobile subscribers should expect to see more services hitting their carrier of choice this summer. Among the announced improvements are the addition of the location based service Scout and a photo upload service. The first mentioned will display points of interests near the user’s location. On the other hand, introduction of the photo upload service will give subscribers ability to instantly upload and send photos from their camera phones.

Disney will of course go further — the MVNO carrier will also launch a unique online calendaring service later this year that will allow parents to manage the family calendar from a website with updates being pushed as alerts to family phones. (via: PhoneScoop)

The Finish giant always wants to go step further. Apparently, they are planning to make all their devices location aware in the future.

According to the popular navigation software developer and one of Nokia (NYSE: NOK)’s partners, Route 66, sooner rather than later “we’ll see GPS in everyday mobile phones – even pay as you go cheapies.” It will be another selling point for the handset manufacturers. Still, the battery issue remains, as GPS is draining the power of the phone.

I like the idea. Just hope that we’ll also see more powerful batteries along with this. We’ll watch this space carefully… (via: Navigadget)

Nokia (NYSE: NOK) today announced that it is making its smart2go mapping and navigation platform, available for free download, enabling millions of people to use the most comprehensive map coverage offered on a mobile device. The platform allows for mapping and routing in over 150 countries and has support for full turn-by-turn satellite navigation in over 30 countries. The application allows people to view where they are on a map, search for points-of-interests (POI) around them and create routes to get them there free of charge. Nokia plans to start offering the smart2go application for free, on Saturday, February 10th, for selected Nokia S60 and Windows Mobile 5.0 devices initially and has plans to roll out support for most of the major mobile OS platforms including Nokia S60, Series 40, PocketPC, Linux and other Windows Mobile devices.

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MobiMate recently released the new WorldMate 2007. The most interesting feature of the new version of “Swiss army knife of travel” is the global weather coverage – Weathercaster, which gives users automatic, visual and vocal weather reports. The new version also brings better S60-like UI with tabbed interface.

To sum up, Worldmate 2007 features include: real-time flight status updates, world clocks, global weather forecasts, currency converter and exchange rate service, and world day/night map.

You can read more about Worldmate 2007 on E-Series blog. The application costs 29.95 EUR with one-year subscription. You can download it over-the-air from mobile.mobimate.com or via the PC from here.

Tele Atlas, a leading global geographic content provider, today announced a partnership with Symbian to generate joint support actions for application developers using Tele Atlas data with the Symbian OS.

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