The New TeleNav GPS Naigator for Android

TeleNav helps over 20 million drivers speak in addresses and businesses for natural-voice turn-by-turn guidance and onscreen navigation – plus get three route options! Or use the simplified search field to find restaurants, gas by price, ATMs and more, even when outside of network coverage.

TeleNav GPS Navigator has been overhauled to include new personalized, navigation features that’ll help you get to work on time and may even make the drive fun.

TeleNav GPS Navigator has a new personalized My Dashboard view that’ll pinpoint your location and let you see your drive times to home and work. These details include traffic information so you won’t be late for dinner or your morning meeting.

There’s also three new home screen widgets that’ll provide your current location, estimate your drive times to work and home and provide a quick access to search. Underneath the hood, new map information will render faster and include real-time live traffic and satellite layers. For those that dare to be different, there are even custom car icons that can be downloaded for 99-cents each.

TeleNav GPS Navigator will land on Sprint handsets running Android 2.3 Gingerbread and will be bundled for free into Sprint’s Everything Data and Simply Everything plans. Extra features like lane assist, speed trap and red light camera will cost $4.99 per month.

Help With Google Places Dashboard

 

I wanted to show a typical, current Dashboard screen shot. The screenshot demonstrates both the lack of meaningful help and the problems that still exist with seeking it out by the small business person.

 

I am glad that Google has improved their Help system with a guided approach to solving problems. Google refers to these steps as “escalators”. I think that they will be helpful to many BUT there is still much that could be done in creating a customer service environment that is customer friendly. Much could be done even if a self help only approach to customer service was the only support Google desires to provide.

The contextual help in the dashboard, while present, is not as thorough or as helpful as it could be. The single Help link at the top of the page quickly scrolls off the screen in favor of other Google products. If you do click on the Help link, it is still at least 4 clicks to an answer and the answer is not totally informative.

And this screen shot just deals with the help that is provided INSIDE the dashboard. What about the many forms of support that can only be achieved by a link on the Places page. Why should an SMB need to go to two places for help? But then there are certain support issues that can only be dealt with in the forums? Why should they need to go to a 3rd place for support? And of course, if you do end up in the help forums filling out one of the new forms, will any one answer?

I think Google can do much better. They could do better in contextual, automated help and they could do better designing a comprehensive customer service experience….if they wanted to.

The problem is that I have been saying this same thing for as long as I have been writing this blog. These issues have been ongong for 5 years. While these new help files are a step, and a good step, in the right direction, the still inadequate help environment strongly suggests that they don’t want to.

Google Earth: The Flooding in London

He’s back now with an updated file that generates some slick animations to fly you to London and to animate the rising water. Try it yourself with this KMZ file.

london.jpgMaking it even better is all of the additional 3D buildings that have been added to London this year, making things look much more realistic and helping to show the depth of the water.