Dash Navigation is opening up its in-car GPS device to outside developers through an API program. The Dash already lets consumers create Yahoo map mashups on the Web which they can then send to their car. (Read my earlier review). Now, companies that want to create specific applications for the device, which includes a two-way data channel through GPRS as well as WiFi, can join the API program.
The company’s API launch partners include:
—Coldwell Banker (real-estate listings application)
—Funambol (personal calendar access)
—Mediaguide (identifies names of songs playing on the radio by matching Dash location with database of songs on local stationsthrough the Dash’s microphone)
—Trapster (shows drivers speed traps and lets them warn other Dash drivers)
—WeatherBug (live weather condition)
I have a feeling the Trapster app is going to be a big hit. Companies or developers who want more information about the APIs can send an e-mail to developer [at] dash [dot] net. (I guess putting the APIs on a Website is too advanced for them). But opening the device up as a platform should get a lot of cool apps on there.
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I’ll go ahead and make the worst type of comment, but is ‘teh’ not caught in spell-checkers? That’s two today for you
Cool, now if they could just hurry the hell up and cram this whole package into some hardware that doesn’t suck, get a real 3d perspective and not have a monthly rate that will make anyone but the die hard fan boys go running into the night, they might have product the rest of us would buy.
Erick - This is Mark Williamson from Dash. Yes, we will get the API details up on the website.
Mark
Erick - one quick note. The application provided by Media Guide doesn’t recognize the song based on a mic, what it does is send a request via our internet connection to their servers, and based on the location of the request it sends back a list of radio stations along with the songs playing / just played.
Here is a youtube video of their DashApp:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVzm9bA6Hnw
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Unfortunately without owning a Dash device I don’t think I can view the list of apps
so this could be a repeat. I’m surprised you can’t see this list, its part of what would make me want to buy a dash if I noticed a cool app.
-Anyhow, here is my entry-
How about a facebook integration. This would have two parts. One would be a facebook app that would get updated with your location from the dash (I think given the api this is only available when a user does a search, which is a bit of a bummer). The second would be a list of facebook friends you could start routing to (as Facebook can have addresses for all of your friends) — or call.
Both of these obviously have privacy issues so you’d obviously follow the same sort of ‘only friends can see my position’ or ‘everyone can see my position’ sort of feature. For the second feature that is already taken care of by Facebook for your street address and phone number, we’d just pass along the info that was visible to each user.
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