ASSISTIVE TECHNOLOGY BLOG | INVENTIONS FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

I have been using VZNavigator on my cell phone for the past 2 years and have been very pleased with the service. For those of you who may not be familiar with VZNavigator it is a GPS service that you can subscribe to on the Verizon Wireless network. I have blogged about VZNavigator service earlier this year and was excited to find out that VZNavigator Traffic Enhanced service has just been released. When I went to use VZNavigator just the other day, I was informed that there was an update available to download, which I did. Once I installed the update, VZNavigator Traffic Enhanced was installed. VZNavigator Traffic Enhanced was developed by Networks in Motion and provides complete location based services with traffic alerts which were developed based on historical and real time data. I am very impressed with this update for many reasons. For one, I can now use the 3D perspective which provides a much more fluid and dynamic view of the road. The screen has been redesigned and provides additional information about congestion and delays- showing a bar with the colors green, yellow and red. But more importantly, I can now get real time alerts sent to me that let me know when there is an accident or congestion head. With a click of a button on my cell phone I you can hit the Detour softkey button and be rerouted. The turn by turn audio and new screen design has made this and incredibly feature rich GPS device. VZNavigtor Traffic Enhanced now adds real time weather forecast for your GPS location along with a database of Movies and Events in your GPS area. While I do love my gadgets, I am trying to simply my life and having a powerful and user friendly GPS service like VZNavigator Traffic Enhanced on my phone makes a lot of sense. When I move up to a Blackberry Curve later next week I can then take advantage of the larger screen- now that will be nice!

Here is a list of the additions and features of VZNavigator Traffic Enhanced that I pulled from the Networks in Motions website:

• Traffic Integration – Customers in 75 cities can access routes that are calculated using both historical and real-time reported traffic information. Historical information allows customers to see on average whether the traffic is impacted by traffic lights, heavy traffic or school zones. Incident and flow information tells customers how traffic is flowing and includes details about reported accidents, disabled vehicles and congestion. VZ Navigator′s historical data covers over 750,000 miles of roads in 48 states. The traffic tracking center continually monitors conditions along the customers' routes, sending proactive alerts to drivers about conditions ahead of them on their chosen routes. Detour options allow users to compare estimated times of arrival and conditions before selecting a new route.
• Local Movies and Events– Customers can now search for show times, critics' ratings and other details for movies, concerts, plays, sporting events, and other social events based on the physical location of their phones.
• 3D Perspective View – Enhances navigation by displaying maps from angles customers would see through car windshields, making it easier to visualize turn-by-turn directions.
• Gas Finder – Provides customers with information on the location of gas stations close to their physical locations and even provides gas prices as reported by many gas stations in the area. Once a customer selects a station, VZ Navigator can also provide turn-by-turn directions to the selected gas station.
• Weather – Provides current weather conditions and forecasts based on the physical location of the customer's phone without manually inputting an address.