Riding Up the Hudson With a Dash GPS On My Dash
Erick Schonfeld
20 comments »
Last weekend, I went for a drive with my wife up the Hudson River. Well, she was driving. I was playing with the new Dash Express GPS navigation system. The Dash is not perfect, but it holds a lot of promise. (See CrunchGear’s review). It was able to pinpoint a hard-to-find home on a country road. And it let me toggle between a 2-D and 3-D view, bleating out in a computerized female voice when the next turn was coming up. I had to mute that because the voice was driving my wife crazy. In fact, she found the whole screen pretty distracting, so I had to turn it away from her. But my three-year-old son in the back seat couldn’t get enough of it. He kept yelling at me to move my hand whenever I was blocking his view of the blue car on the screen that somehow went exactly wherever we did. Although, he did point out that our real car is green. (Can’t those Dash folks get anything right?)
The Dash is a GPS unit that can communicate back to the Internet using cellular data networks or WiFi (it contains three chips: GPS,WiFi, and GPRS). You can’t browse the Web, but you can use the touch screen to search Yahoo Local for nearby gas stations, restaurants, airports, and any other place that might be listed. One of my favorite features: it can tell you the price of gas at each station nearby so you can price shop without wasting gas driving around. The Dash even found a chocolate shop for us when the one that had been recommended to us was closed. Once you find a place you want to go to, you just hit “route” and it gets you there. It picks what it thinks are the two or three most direct routes. And it even shows you the traffic on those routes based on historical patterns, sensors, and, if available, traffic data from other Dash drivers.
You also can program the Dash from the Web and create GPS mashups. For instance, you can mark your own addresses on a map, find places on Yahoo local, or tap into any GeoRSS feed (or make your own) and send it to the GPS unit in your car. I’d love to be able to access the Web with a browser as well, or at least get regular RSS feeds, but the temptation to check those things while driving might be too great (which is why that is not a feature).
The best thing about the Dash is that it connects you to other Dash drivers to give you traffic intelligence. Because each Dash unit is sending back data about its speed and location, once a critical mass of a few hundred or a thousand drivers get a Dash in the city where you live, you will arguably have the best live traffic information available. At last that is the theory. Early adopters will have to wait for that critical mass to build up before they can test it out.
One request: For people living in big cities with street parking, knowing when a nearby Dash driver just vacated a spot would be a killer feature for future versions of the software.
Okay, I actually have some more requests. An opt-in messaging system with other Dash drivers would be awesome. If handled correctly, could be very helpful and create a strong sense of community among Dash drivers. (No plans for that either, but I think it is a good idea).
Here is where the Dash needs some help. If it picks the correct route, you are fine. But if you know a better one, you cannot tell it which way you want to go. You can only pick a destination and hope that it doesn’t lead you astray. I noticed that it tends to favor major highways, even if they are 20 miles out of your way. All you can do is keep driving, and eventually it will pick a new route based on your GPS coordinates. Something as simple as being able to move the line of the suggested route with your finger, like you can on Google Maps with a cursor, would fix that problem.
Another gripe: you cannot do multi-point routing from the GPS unit itself. You must enter a new destination each time you get into the car. (Although, you can create a map of destinations on the Web and send them to your unit as saved destinations).
A final major flaw with the digital map in the Dash is that as you are driving along a strange highway, it doesn’t show you what cities you are passing. That is how I mentally keep track of where I am when I am driving long distances. On that ride along the Hudson, I found myself repeatedly referring to our old, beat-up, road atlas to get my bearings. The thing that kills me is that the Dash knew exactly what cities we were passing, it just wouldn’t show me.
These are all minor quibbles. I am particularly excited about the the fact that the device’s capabilities will grow over time, especially the ability to see live traffic information and to download customized lists of destinations and geographically-relevant feeds. The Dash goes on sale starting now at Amazon for $399, plus a monthly fee of $10 (the first three months are free).
Is this the first GPS Unit you have used? The 3d maps and finding nearby locations like gas and food are pretty standard, as is the female voice (we changed ours to the british guy’s voice though so we could name our’s Jeeves).
The exciting features are the gas prices. Messaging would also be very cool. The traffic is pretty cool but other GPS units in that price range would probably also have traffic status available for a monthly fee, though using the data from other people while they are driving would probably be more accurate, I don’t know since I have no idea how the other GPS companies do it.
The routing is usually a problem with the company that supplies the maps. GPS units will get you were you want to go, but almost never pick the best route. So, if you know the area they don’t provide much value until you are trying to find something new.
That sucks not being able to add waypoints, but I am sure that is just a software update away since most basic GPS units have it.
Overall, looks promising. Be careful though, once you start using a GPS you find you soon can’t live without it…
i can’t wait to get run over by a Dash user who is busy doing his instant messaging instead of driving. suh-weet.
What other pertinent information does the gadget advise you of? I hope not, like, where you can find pot and 5,000 usd hookers..:)
Just joking!
But in Japan these things been around for ages! Fujitsu Ten manufactures them. America is a bit slow to adopt to new technology.
Maybe soon the car will be able to drive by itself while you sit in the back seat and blog away, or do something else perhaps?
go hudson
@Jayman - Hi, this is Mark from Dash Navigation. I just wanted to let you know that in terms of finding destinations we use our internet connection to do local searches on Yahoo! Local, which means that you can really search for just about anything and find it. I always do searches for products, or general categories (think “pet food”) and you will get back contextual results.
Yes, Way points will be added in the future as an over the air software update. In terms of routing, over time we are going to let users teach the device the best routes between two points, so this is another feature that will come via an over the air software update.
Hope this clarifies a few things for you.
Mark
Wow can I see your magical auqtic hover car? That’s the real story here.
Hmm good little gadget although we’re not sure an opt-in IM system would be a good idea unless of course you have a passenger to take care of that messaging? LOL Being run over by the Dash customers wouldn’t be good fo their business.
I really like the future suggestions you have for the Dash, and it is sort of funny, because as I was driving from NYC to Albany last weekend and ran across speed traps I thought it would be a cool thing to have a service/device that let you mark speed traps and would update users of the same service/device. Dash could totally do this!!!
The legality of such a use might be in question but if it is legal to flash your brights in order to let someone know a cop is hiding, then why not make it possible to do that using technology?
I wish I had known about this before I dropped money on a Garmin. You pretty much described all of the features I wish mine had.
I live in Brooklyn and travel to Long Island often and I don’t need a GPS receiver to tell me the traffic conditions, because its always bumper to bumper around here.
@Erick - Have you heard of a site/service called SpotScout (spotscout.com). I shot their CEO the link to your post. He seems interested in figuring out how to fulfill your request…
“One request: For people living in big cities with street parking, knowing when a nearby Dash driver just vacated a spot would be a killer feature for future versions of the software. ”
I know they’re eye-deep in their launch at the moment. Seems that SpotScout and Dash need to meet.
I can’t imagine this being any better than the tomtom one third edition, or go 720….it has map share (open source map corrections), and you can get traffic udpates if you subscribe. I don’t see what’s so special with this device.
My apologies, but why not to buy a communicator instead? Tytn II or Nokia N95 can do all of it + much more.
@Amit: Hi, this is Brandon from Dash. Speed traps are definitely a feature request we hear frequently. The good news is that we are putting the finishing touches on a Developer API program which will allow developers to create their own buttons and apps on the device. I have a sneaking suspicion that speed traps will be a high priority for a few developers out there.
@Dave: We think our two-way connectivity provides some compelling advantages over the competition. Our network approach to traffic gives drivers up-to-the-minute traffic flow information, based on the conditions that other drivers in the Dash Network are experiencing. Our partnership with Yahoo! Local gives contextual search capability, so that drivers are no longer stuck with a static list of POIs. And over-the-air map updates and software updates are truly seamless.
“..Dash Express could interface the Robotic steering wheel and guide car on the road using traffic/motion sensors and live satellite images. Also it could also feel me for all my mood and just take me preferred beer bar or my type of restaurant (spicy Indian) while I am sleeping in backseat of my car…”
http://www.nanosaka.com
In addition to speed traps, spotting of speed and red light cameras would be very helpful.
Major drawback: lack of ability to plug in maps of other countries as most other vendors can. Even without the communication aspect. Could future software downloads be a possibility?
Would be interesting to be able to track the number of units sold in a metro area.
Pricing: I’ve seen $400 and $600 prices. What’s up now and down the road?
Love the vacated parking spot idea.