by Willy Franzen on October 12, 2009
In my day… Columbus Day was a real holiday. Now there’s a huge portion of the population that doesn’t even get the day off. Yes, I understand that Christopher Columbus was a bit overrated as a historical hero (and a lot of the things that we learned about him in grade school were inaccurate), but I’m still amazed that he had the guts and the persistence to make a voyage across the Atlantic happen. Now we’ll barely take a walk down the street without a GPS enabled device in our pocket. Navigation and exploration have a long history, but I’m not sure how much more advancement is possible. Facet Technology would disagree. They’re an Eden Prairie, MN based software and services company that is changing what state of the art means when it comes to the Transportation, Mapping and Food Processing Industries. They’re another Inc. 5000 company with 110.4% three-year growth, and I think they’re going to shoot up the rankings over the next few years.
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by Willy Franzen on August 25, 2009
Before my fishing trip to Canada last week, I ordered a couple of books from Amazon for some pleasure reading. One of those books was Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)
. I bought it on the recommendation of Ben Casnocha, and I have thoroughly enjoyed the first 200 or so pages (I’ll finish it soon). The book has taught me more about driving than I’ll ever want to know, and it also put me on to NAVTEQ. They are headquartered a half mile away from me here in Chicago (with lots of international offices too) and “a world leader in premium-quality digital map data and content.” One of those premium map features is traffic tracking, which is why they were mentioned in the book. By informing drivers with up to date traffic maps in their vehicles, they not only make driving easier for their users, but they’re also mitigating traffic jams in real time by diverting drivers.
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by Willy Franzen on November 25, 2008
I have a first generation iPhone, and despite the fact that it uses cell towers and Wi-Fi hotspots instead of GPS for location, I have still become entirely dependent on using my phone to find my way. It’s blatantly obvious that the cell phone is the convergence point for all kinds of technology – cameras, video cameras, computers, GPS devices, voice recorders, address books, and video games now exist in one device. The next step is tying location awareness into all of these functions, and that’s what Sunnyvale, CA based TeleNav is all about. They were the “first to launch a GPS navigation and mobile workforce management service on a cell phone in North America,” and they’re also the “fastest growing company in Silicon Valley” according to Deloitte. They’re partnered with “every significant wireless carrier and device manufacturer,” and they’re primed to make the most of the GPS chips that are now found in most phones.
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by Willy Franzen on October 13, 2008
Ok, it may be politically incorrect to celebrate Columbus Day, but it’s just about the only holiday that I had off in college. Maybe it just happened to be a convenient weekend for Fall Break, but I still can’t believe that I didn’t have class on Columbus Day, but did have class on Labor Day (when I went to a School of Industrial and Labor Relations). Anyway, Christopher Columbus wasn’t much of a navigator. He had no idea where he was going, and he tried to take the long way around the world. Still, his ineptitude was the reason that he “discovered” the Americas. Had Garmin been around in the 1490s, Columbus never would have ended up where he did. Then again, the existence of a company built on GPS technology would have changed a lot of things for famous explorers five centuries ago. (Much like the existence of iPods – like the one we’re giving away – would have changed the world for musicians back then.)
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by Willy Franzen on February 20, 2008
You’re driving home from college to spend a night with your family before you head to the airport the next morning to go on your final Spring Break with 11 of your closest friends. You’re behind schedule because you waited 45 minutes for some kid that you said you’d give a ride because he lives in the same town as you, only to get a call from him saying he left yesterday and didn’t need a ride anymore. It started snowing about 15 minutes into your drive, and you’ve been going 45 MPH on the highway the whole time. It’s dark and you’re gripping the steering wheel so tight that your fingers are numb. You see road flares ahead and can see that a snow plow has been hit by a tractor-trailer. The highway is closed, and you have no idea how you’re going to figure out how to get home on back roads. Luckily you have a Dash Express. It tells you that the detour that everyone else is taking is also backed up because of an accident, and it gives you two other alternate routes to get back on the highway past the closure. It also tells you that the coffee shop coming up on your right isn’t worth stopping for because there’s a better one a mile down the road. Maybe you will make it home tonight after all.
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