Fwd: Dash's amazing new GPS gizmo guides you around traffic.

from slate.com

Dash's amazing new GPS gizmo guides you around traffic.

• nowadays when you are lost, your phone can probably assist you. So it's no surprise that GPS firms are suffering.
• The Dash Express navigator packs a killer feature that other GPS systems lack: the Internet. Network connectivity powers Dash's primary attraction: what the company calls "crowd-sourced traffic." As you traverse your favored metropolis, the Dash Express anonymously transmits information about its location and speed to a central server. Every other Dash driver does the same. Using this data, Dash can paint a stunningly accurate picture of traffic patterns. Have you ever been stuck in a jam and wished there were some way to look two miles ahead to see whether things are still ugly? Dash essentially does that for you.
• I've been testing the Dash Express for a week, and I'm floored. One morning rush hour this week, I drove from my home in San Francisco to Stanford University. At the start of the 30-mile trip, I plugged my destination into the Dash Express. The device gave me three possible routes, each with an estimated travel time based on traffic conditions gleaned from other drivers currently moving down those roads. I chose what Dash said was the fastest route, a straight shot down the congested 101 freeway. The device guessed I would arrive at Stanford in 59 minutes. Sixty-two minutes later, I was there. Along the way, the Dash predicted nearly every hurdle along my trip with eerie accuracy: Traffic slowed down just where the color-coded map showed yellow, orange, and red roads, and speeds picked up again exactly where Dash's map was painted green.
• Dash also receives incident and sensor data, but it adjusts all its numbers with on-the-ground conditions fed back by real drivers. The system uses this info both to plan your route and to suggest changes as you're driving. If Dash senses a sudden slow-down ahead, it will ask whether you'd like to be routed around it. Sometimes, it will even guide you off the freeway and through surface streets, for which Dash also knows traffic conditions. (The system tracks traffic patterns over time, compiling a database of how quickly all roads move during 672 discrete intervals during the day.)
• Dash's Internet connectivity helps with things besides traffic. Traditional GPS devices ship with databases of millions of shops and attractions across the country. Like a printed phone book, these databases go out of date: If you bought your GPS a couple of months ago, for instance, it will think there are 600 more Starbucks in the country than there now are. Over time, as roads shut down and new developments spring up, maps go stale. In order to refresh your device, you've got to buy an update disk.
• Dash updates itself automatically with the latest maps, and it offers something an order of magnitude more useful than a built-in database of attractions: a Web-based search engine. When you look for nearby shops in Dash, you're really searching Yahoo, which already knows about all those shuttered Starbucks.
• For all this great functionality, Dash faces a major vulnerability as a business proposition: Many of its features can be replicated on smartphones. Technically, the iPhone can do everything Dash does—it's got the Internet, GPS, and a touch-screen interface. It's possible to imagine another start-up building a Dash clone on Apple's device or on any other advanced phone. Considering how many of them are out there, the crowd-sourced traffic information generated by the iPhone would put Dash's data to shame.
• In the meantime, the traffic data that Dash learns from its drivers could also prove valuable. The licensing possibilities look lucrative—Google, Microsoft, and Apple might all want better traffic data for their maps products. UPS, FedEx, and the Postal Service could probably also do with a clearer picture of road conditions. And Dash might even be able to help Starbucks out. At a recent tech conference, a Dash executive pointed out that Dash knows where people drive and knows where people search for coffee. That means it knows exactly where Starbucks should open up its next location in Arkansas: Highway 40, between Little Rock and Memphis, Tenn.