Today Verizon officially announced the Motorola Droid launch date: November 6th. The Droid will be the first phone to release with Android 2.0, which will include that jealousy-that-burns-like-the-herp-inducing navigation system. Yeah, the free turn-by-turn GPS that sent Garmin and TomTom stock into free fall. The phone will run $199.99 after a $100 debit card rebate on a two-year contract.

The phone has Verizon understandably excited (though it did seem like Verizon forgot about the Storm 2) – it’s got a snappy processor, a great screen, a decent keyboard, and an excellent operating system. It’s the phone Verizon’s been missing, and with the free turn-by-turn announcement today, it got even better. In my mind it’s the phone to have if you’re trying to avoid AT&T, as I expect any reasonable person would.

Verizon had this to say about the Droid: “It is a no-fuss, high-tech, location-aware, voice-recognizing, over-the-air updating, multi-tasking machine.” Sounds to me like quite a bit of fuss. Quite a bit of fuss I’d like to get my hands on – know what I’m saying?

Stupid tech is almost as much fun as useful tech, at least for someone like me. When you spend a couple hours each day reading tech blogs and news stories, the strange stuff really brightens the day. Take this torpedo, for instance. Named the Reusable Unambiguous Swimmer Warning Vehicle (fairly ambiguous name, no?) this thing seeks out enemy swimmers (?!?) and then tracks them. That’s right, it tracks them, following behind and reporting GPS coordinates back to some central computer.

So I have to wonder, the point? Wouldn’t echo-location do just as well? And once you have these alleged terrorists/triathlon enthusiasts pinpointed under water, what then? Send the GPS powered attack robots after them (okay, if those existed I would be much more serious about these torpedoes)?

Perhaps the most mind-blowing part of this whole thing are the comments from Jim Pollock, project manager for the Integrated Swimmer Defense Program at the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (again, ?!?). Pollock says the torpedo is, “a candidate technology for a solution to deterring swimmers. It’s not necessarily a solution that the Navy has picked at this point.” I’m not one to get alarmed about orange threat levels and terrorist attacks coming to a city near me, but the fact that our naval defense research dollars are going toward crap like this has me more concerned about national security than ever before. It’s like they polled a bunch of ten-year-olds for good defense ideas. “How about missiles that hunt swimmers and then…swim with them? Yeah!!!” Yikes.

Source: Gizmodo

The first turn-by-turn GPS app for the iPhone was released this week from a company called XROAD. And to pretty glowing reviews:

The iPhone has unquestionably dominated the mobile phone industry for the past two years. One of its biggest advantages over other devices is the long list of applications of every variety that can be downloaded to it. There are “apps” for everything from keeping track of your Twitter feed to following your favorite baseball team. Finally, after nearly two years, a developer has released the first real-time, turn-by-turn navigation application for the iPhone. XROADS G-Map ($19) is clearly the best real-time navigation option for an iPhone right now, but we ran it through the same tests we would a stand-alone TomTom, Garmin or Mio system to see how it fared with the big boys of navigation.

…

While there is room for improvement in this product, this is also the first attempt at a real-time turn-by-turn navigation application for the iPhone. As long as XROADS is willing to follow what other developers have done by offering free updates, this app is sure to take a chunk out of the GPS navigation market.

Wow, that’s not what I expected for the iPhone’s first crack at a turn-by-turn GPS app. Kudos to XROAD. And at $20, this app is a great deal. But there are some obvious improvements to be had.

First, and foremost in my mind is voice routing. When I drive I am usually paying attention to the road and listening to the radio. I don’t mind getting interrupted to let me know a turn is coming. In fact, I expect it. I can’t be expected to be watching the road and a map at the same time. It’s not safe or fun.

Also, the lack of street names is tough. Especially when driving on crowded city streets. When there are many streets coming up, it is nice to be able to be able to check the street you’re turning onto before you get there. And even better, the street before that.

Knocks aside, this looks to be a winner which is hopefully a good sign of things to come. XROAD did the best they could do for now without using all the hard drive space on the iPhone. Some small improvements here and there would blow away the competition. Especially when the competition costs about 10 time more.