1. Last week, Engadget posted about a British company which is demonstrating an improved GPS system that incorporates cellular signal triangulation right into the chip itself and will seamlessly switch between GPS and cellular signals. If you have been following along, you know that I have been particularly interested in seeing this develop into the default technology for the iPhone and its imitators. (As it stands today, the iPhone uses cellular and WiFi triangulation, but not GPS; the upcoming Nuviphone will use GPS and cellular, but through a software solution, not hardware). This should take care of that nicely.
2. Meanwhile, this article at The First Post wonders if dedicated GPS devices are succumbing to “feature bloat” by adding lots of worthless innovations to maintain the “value” of those devices. It’s a fair cop, because the stand-alone GPS gizmo probably only has 3-5 years left in its lifespan. Built-in GPS systems are bubbling down into non-luxury cars as optional upgrades and will probably wind up as standard in most cars sooner rather than later. And the obvious synergy of the GPS-enabled smartphone that we’ve been talking about is only one or two product cycles away.
3. One more handheld gizmo thing: this company has developed a web app for the iPhone that will let you remotely order your coffee beverage at Starbucks. Here’s a pair of screenshots:
Once you arrive at the counter to pick up your double-shot no-foam soy-milk latte, you even use the iPhone to pay for the drink using a bar-code-like system that scans a “Semacode” image.
4. The NYT tech blog “Bits” reported on a recent change in banking laws that will now allow you to deposit checks to your checking account electronically from your home computer using a scanner to image the checks. The law went into effect in 2003 so that banks could speed up check processing by sending images electronically to one another, but it also applies to the consumer. So far only USAA, the bank that services the military, has made this available to their customers, but you should expect to see it being offered by lots of banks soon now that Fiserv, the company that handles most of these transactions, has developed home-user software. No word on how high the inevitable usurious fees will be to use this, but you can bet that the banks are thinking about that right now.
5. Lastly, do go and read this little rant about Bluetooth phone headsets from my friend and former cow-orker Dave Belfer-Shevett. It made me smile.
