IranMap

Leading Nordic directory provider Eniro has signed an agreement with digital map maker NAVTEQ, to make Eniro’s local content available in navigation devices using the NAVTEQ map.

Initially Eniro will provide information on 300,000 advertisers and their related content to be integrated into NAVTEQ’s database for Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Poland. Advertiser data from Eniro will thereby be available in cars, Smartphones and other handheld navigation devices.

“Through the agreement with NAVTEQ, we are strengthening our offering towards advertisers – we are adding another distribution channel, making us an even stronger player on the market”. said Jesper Kärrbrink, President and CEO of Eniro.

Eniro is the leading directory and search provider in the Nordic media market with operations in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Poland. The company is listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange and has some 5,000 employees. In 2008, revenues amounted to SEK 6,645 million (US$847 million).

Chinese telecom giant Huawei has selected ‘amAze’ as the turn-by-turn navigation application on its new GPS handsets said Locationet, the developer of this ad-funded navigation system.

New Huawei Smartphones

According to the agreement, the amAze application will be pre-installed by Huawei on its new GPS-enabled handsets. Huawei has unveiled two GPS handsets with its own brand at the recently held CommunicAsia trade show in Singapore. The Android-powered “U8230″ and the “C8000″, which utilizes the Windows Mobile operating system, will be released in the second half of 2009. Users of the Huawei handsets will gain immediate access to the amAze navigation service with a wide coverage of rich maps around the globe.

“Huawei’s progress with handset sales are gaining momentum with shipments of CDMA handsets recently surpassing the 50 million mark”, stated a recent press release from the Chinese manufacturer.

Garmin released a free, mandatory GPS software update to correct a software issue that has been discovered to cause select GPS devices to repeatedly attempt to update GPS firmware, and then either shut down or no longer acquire GPS satellite signals. The products affected are the nüvi 7×5 series, nüvi 800 series, nüvi 8×5 series, zūmo 660, GPSMAP 620 and GPSMAP 640.

Garmin nüvi 7×5 series products that are no longer able to acquire a GPS satellite signal may download a firmware update immediately that will correct the software issue. This firmware update may be downloaded using Garmin’s WebUpdater.

Firmware updates for other affected products will be available online through Garmin’s WebUpdater in the near future. Affected customers who have registered their GPS device will be notified about these updates through email.

Garmin nüvi 7×5 customers who are no longer able to power on their GPS device will need to visit www.garmin.com/support, and select the first FAQ titled “My nüvi 755T, 765T, 775T or 785T is giving me the message ‘Updating GPS Firmware’ or will no longer power on…” Customers will then need to follow the instructions to request a return authorization so that the device may be repaired under warranty.

We know our customers rely upon their Garmin GPS device(s), especially during the summer travel season, and we regret any inconvenience this situation may have caused. We are committed to developing products that are known for their quality and reliability and will continue to work diligently to earn the trust of our customers.

If you recently updated your Garmin Firmware and i essentially killed your GPS, the fix is here. Garmin has posted fixes and FAQ’s all over the place to get you back and running via “Mandatory” updates; shouldn’t have let that first one out the door, but hats off to Garmin for getting a fix out quickly. The good news is that for many, it’s a simple update, the bad news for some is that you need to send the unit back in for repair. From Garmin’s Blog:

“Garmin nüvi 7×5 series products that are no longer able to acquire a GPS satellite signal may download a firmware update immediately that will correct the software issue. This firmware update may be downloaded using Garmin’s WebUpdater.

Garmin nüvi 7×5 customers who are no longer able to power on their GPS device will need to visit www.garmin.com/support, and select the first FAQ titled “My nüvi 755T, 765T, 775T or 785T is giving me the message ‘Updating GPS Firmware’ or will no longer power on…” Customers will then need to follow the instructions to request a return authorization so that the device may be repaired under warranty. ”

If you are having trouble, start a the Garmin Blog, then move to the proper download or FAQ page.

Garmin has now introduced the Garmin Zumo 660 Satellite Navigator especially for motorbike users. This compact sat nav has a dimension of 13.5 x 8.4 x 2.3 cm and a weight of 270 grams. It provides a wide 4.3-inch touch screen display with a resolution of 480×272 pixels. The Garmin Zumo 660 Motorbike Satellite Navigator is powered by a removable rechargeable lithium-ion battery that offers a life of 5 hours. It is waterproof, provides IPX7 standard.

Its internal antenna is integrated with a highly sensitive receiver. Although, it has an internal solid state memory, it provides microSD card compatibility that can be used to increase the memory capacity.

Garmin Zumo 660 Satellite Navigator includes the basemap of Europe and provides the facility to add more maps. It allows you to save 1000 waypoints and 20 preplanned routes. Navigational guidance offers timely voice directions and spoken street and junction names. The major landmarks and buildings are displayed in 3D formats. Routes can be calculated for multiple destinations in one go. You can also compute route to avoid tolls and highways. Though it comes with preloaded points of interest, you have an option of adding customised pois. Its lane assist function guides you through the correct lane on a highway. The speed limit indicator alerts you on exceeding the specified speed of the region.

Garmin Zumo 660 Portable Satellite Navigator comes with Bluetooth compatibility that allows you to make and receive hands free calls. Its multimedia features include an MP3 player and a picture viewer. Thus this GPS unit can be converted into a portable music player and photo viewer while you are not using it for navigational purposes. The Zumo 660 box consists of a motorcycle mount, a carrying case, a battery pack, an automotive suction cup mount, a USB cable, an automotive power cable, a dashboard disc and a quick start user’s manual.

Persian (Farsi) added to Google Translate. This means you can now translate any text from Persian into English and from English into Persian — whether it’s a news story, a website, a blog, an email, a tweet or a Facebook message. The service is available free at http://translate.google.com.

We feel that launching Persian is particularly important now, given ongoing events in Iran. Like YouTube and other services, Google Translate is one more tool that Persian speakers can use to communicate directly to the world, and vice versa — increasing everyone’s access to information.

As with all machine translation, it’s not perfect yet. And we’re launching this service quickly, so it may perform slowly at times. We’ll keep a close watch and if it breaks, we’ll restore service as quickly as we can.

We’ve optimized this service for translation between Persian and English. But we’re working hard to improve Persian translation for the additional 40 languages available via Google Translate. If you see something you think is incorrectly translated, we invite you to click on the “contribute a better translation” link and we’ll learn from your correction.

The web provides many new channels of communication that enable us to see events unfold in real-time around the world. We hope that Google Translate helps make all that information accessible to you — no matter what language you speak. So please visit Google Translate and try it out.

Franz Och, Google Principal Scientist

Search giant Google has stepped up work to release a tool that will translate Farsi into English and vice-versa.
The company told the BBC it was speeding up the project because of the huge interest in what was currently going on in Iran.

At the same time, the world’s biggest social networking site, Facebook, is launching a Persian version.

Both companies say they hope their efforts will improve access to information and communication.

Google now works in 42 different languages

“There is a huge amount of interest in events in Iran and people want to know what is going on inside and outside the country,” Google’s principal scientist, Franz Och, told the BBC.

“Providing access to information across language boundaries should be very helpful. It’s one more tool that Persian speakers can use to communicate directly to the world and vice-versa.”

Facebook also announced that it had also accelerated work on its Farsi translation. “Much of the content created and shared on Facebook related to these events has been in Persian – the native language of Iran – but the users have had to navigate the site in English or other languages,” it said.

As a result, Facebook has now made the entire site available in a test version of Persian, “so Persian speakers inside of Iran and around the world can begin using it in their native language”.

Challenges
Both companies stress privately that there is no political motivation in what they are doing, and that their main goal is to facilitate communication and the flow of information.

Google’s stated mission is to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. To that end, it is already available in 41 other languages from Arabic to Spanish and from Danish to Vietnamese.
Mr Och said he and his team had been working hard over the past few days to rush the Farsi service out. As a result, it was about 80% perfect.

“This is done using machine translation which, in general, is not as good as human translation and so, for some languages, the quality is mixed,” explained Mr Och. “With Spanish to English we get a nice translation, but for others it’s much harder because we don’t have so much data from which we can build our systems.

“Farsi is one of those where the translation is not as good but we hope to make it better relatively soon.”

Likewise Facebook has said its translated site is not a polished product but “we felt it was important to help people communicate rather than wait”. However the company said a lot of its success in being able to go live with what it has done is down to the more than 400 Persian speakers who submitted thousands of individual translations of the site.

Both companies are looking to perfect their work and said they welcomed help from Persian speakers.

Milestone
“This is another milestone in allowing human beings to communicate with each other and break down the barriers that might have prevented them from understanding each other due to language,” said Mr Rasiej.

Samsung this week unveiled a new phone, the Samsung Jet, boasting a Samsung proprietary operating system and presented as “smarter than a smartphone”. Samsung Jet indeed supports key smartphone’ software features such as multi-task manager and Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync.

In addition, the Jet integrates on-board navigation software from Route66 and GyPSii’s location-based social network.

On the hardware side the phone has all the bells and whistles of any other high end “smart” phones such as a 5 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and A-GPS packed into a small (108.8 x 53.5 x 11.9 mm) and elegant casing.

At the CommunicAsia tradeshow GPS Business News was given a demonstration of the navigation software which features 3D landmarks from the NAVTEQ map data.

This was not, of course, the result the West was hoping for. But political chaos and public disorder in Iran is not what any outside government wants either.

The election choice was basically between the openly anti-Western Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who made it clear he wanted to end Iran’s isolation and talk to the Americans.
It would certainly not have been an easy relationship, even if Mr Mousavi had become president. Iran will always be a difficult country for the United States, Britain and other Western countries to deal with.

Even the Shah, who lost his throne because he tried to westernise Iran too quickly, was a difficult man to do business with.

Iran is an important regional power with an historical sense of having been held back by the West; its interests are bound to clash with those of the West from time to time.

Tarnished reputation

As far as the West was concerned, the choice between Mr Ahmadinejad and Mr Mousavi was between grades of difficulty.
Now the question has been settled. But for the outside world in general, it has happened in a way which will affect Mr Ahmadinejad’s entire new four-year term as president.

According to an Iranian newspaper on the day of the election, a government minister in Indonesia hailed Iran as an example to the world of democracy in action.

After the riots in the streets and the clampdown on leading reformist politicians, we are unlikely to hear much of that kind of sentiment for a while.

But it certainly is not in the outside world’s interest to have a long period of disorder in Iran. Political chaos in a leading oil-producing country would do more economic damage to Western countries.

They will surely prefer President Ahmadinejad, with his reputation tarnished, to that.

Stifling dissent

The aftermath of the election has shown one important difference from the past: it is harder than ever for the authorities in a relatively sophisticated country like Iran to clamp down on dissent.
Reports here say that the bureau of the respected Al-Arabiya 24-hour news station has been closed.

Action has been taken against other foreign journalists. BBC Online has been blocked from time to time, and so have mobile phone services.

Yet people right across the country have been kept fully informed of what is going on – there are so many ways people can get the news nowadays.

Realising this, even Iran’s own state broadcaster (IRIB) has been showing pictures of the worst of Saturday’s rioting in Tehran, a decision that may well have been taken at a very high level.
Realising this, even Iran’s own state broadcaster (IRIB) has been showing pictures of the worst of Saturday’s rioting in Tehran, a decision that may well have been taken at a very high level.

The Islamic republic has reached a difficult moment in its history.

Everything now depends on whether Mr Ahmadinejad can quieten things down without creating more anger on the streets.

Pioneer has now introduced a navigational unit exclusively for VW, Seat and Skoda vehicles. The in-dash sat nav system is an entertainment and navigational unit has been known as the Pioneer AVIC-F9110BT Integrated Satellite Navigator. It offers a wide 5.8-inch touch screen display for viewing navigational data as well as for watching DVDs and CDs. It has a 2GB of total internal memory that can be increased further with the help of external SD memory cards.

This automotive sat nav unit with a glossy black finish comes preloaded with the TeleAtlas maps of 44 European countries and around 1.7 million points of interests. With such a high number of points of interests, you can easily locate the nearest petrol station, ATM or restaurant.

Pioneer AVIC-F9110BT Satellite Navigator includes text-to-speech and voice guidance functionality that reads out the names of major roads and streets as and when they appear on the screen. This feature is not limited only to names of streets but has been extended to traffic events, which is received through the TMC receiver. Furthermore, it allows you to customise the POI database from Google Maps by using the NavGate Feeds application. It exhibits Bluetooth compatibility that enables you to make and receive hands free calls. This feature empowers you to have better control over the wheel. The important landmarks are displayed in 3D forms.

The Pioneer AVIC-F9110BT Multimedia Satellite Navigator provides you the ability to watch movies from DVDs, SD cards, CDs or a USB device as well as listen to music tracks. Most of the common music file formats are supported by this unit. You can connect your iPod or iPhone by using an optional compatible cable. This Pioneer AVIC-F9110BT Satellite Navigator offers a wide range of services that vary from phone control mechanism to entertainment options to accurate and efficient navigation. It can thus rightly be called as the perfect travel companion for VW, Seat and Skoda vehicles.