Slashgeo

Very Spatial points to this interesting project named TrafficView [detailled pdf]. From Very Spatial's summary: "The University of Maryland has an interesting concept for traffic monitoring and mapping - peer-to-peer traffic monitoring! The idea is that cars will be equipied with devices which can communicate with nearby cars to report traffic conditions and the like. It’s an interesting use of peer-to-peer technologies and potentially GIS." Note that the project doesn't seem under development anymore.

All Points Blog links to a MIT project in development to share location between people over WiFi using peer-to-peer data transfer instead of server-hosted information. From the article: "iFIND offers a solution before the privacy advocates' fears become reality. A laptop calculates a person's location using Wi Fi access points, and then shares that information with the selected friends and colleagues on a peer-to-peer basis." See other wifi services in related stories below.

All Points Blog discuss a new service by Inrix which provide predictive and real-time traffic service for Windows Mobile devices. This site indicates which information is used: "Inrix acquires real-time and historical sensor data from hundreds of public and private sources including anonymous, real-time GPS probe data from more than 625,000 commercial fleet, delivery and taxi vehicles; toll tag data; and occupancy and speed measurements from Department of Transportation sensor networks. Additionally, the Inrix Smart Dust Network aggregates real-time incidents and hundreds of market-specific criteria that affect traffic – such as construction and road closures, sporting and entertainment events, school schedules and weather forecasts." See the numerous related stories below.

Slashdot discuss a new GPS navigation system which relies on 'wisdom of the crowds'. Their summary explains it more clearly: "The New York Times is running an article on Dash Express, a new navigation system for automobiles that not only receives GPS location data, but broadcasts information about its travels. Information is passed back to Dash over a cellular data network, where it is shared with other users to let them know if there are slowdowns or traffic jams on the road ahead. The real benefit of the system isn't apparent until enough units are collecting data in a given area - so Dash distributed over 2,000 prototype units to test drivers in 25 large cities." All Points Blog also links to a Wired article on Dash. In related stories below, I included many previous stories which aim at real-time traffic info from Nav Systems.

I admit this is partly a rehash of this January story, but The Map Room offers nice simple graphs on the online mapping services and GPS devices marketshares. In short, MapQuest and Garmin (in the U.S.) are way ahead their competition. From TMR: "MapQuest continued to lead with more than 50 percent of the market, with Google Maps second at 22 percent, and Yahoo and Microsoft trailing. [...] survey conducted in February of the U.S. market gave Garmin a 56 percent share of the consumer GPS market [...]" MapQuest also recently added current traffic conditions to their mapping services, something Google Maps has since over a year. See also related stories below.