NN4D speaks at Sony Ericsson Developer Carnival 2009 in China

NAVTEQ has been invited as a speaker at a developer event organized by Sony Ericsson Developer World (www.sonyericsson.com/developer) in China on Tuesday December 15, 2009 at the Beijing Shangri-la Hotel in Beijing, China. The event is expected to draw 200-300 developers.

Sony Ericsson Developer Carnival 2009 is an event held for mobile phone entertainment developers and is aimed at helping professional developers get on the fast track from mind to market and ensure that a constant stream of fun, useful and innovative content and applications is continually available for Sony Ericsson phones in China and contributing to the global portfolio of applications.

One of the hot new areas to address is location-based services. NAVTEQ will give a presentation on the topic “Leading the way through location-aware applications”.

Speaker: Dong Sun, Technical Consultant, NAVTEQ Network for Developers (NN4D)

• Positioning technologies, industry trends & opportunities in LBS
• Carnival of LBS applications
• Mapping APIs and technical resources available via NN4D
• China map data and location content

NAVTEQ will also have a booth at the event, showcasing its latest map and location content offering and answering questions from developers.

More information (in Chinese) about the event is available here>>

Simplifying mobile application development through online testing

DeviceAnywhere™ is a Global Sponsor of the 2010 NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge®. All developers registering for this premier competition for location developers have access to DeviceAnywhere’s special sponsorship package (http://www.nn4d.com/site/global/market/lbs_challenge/sponsors/global_sponsors/2010_Sponsor_DeviceAnywhere.jsp), providing 10 free hours of testing apps from anywhere in the world.

Don’t miss the NN4D webinar on Thursday this week with Darren Madonic, Senior Technical Account Manager, DeviceAnywhere.

Webinar subject: "Simplifying Mobile Application Development"

Date: Thursday, December 10, 2009 at 10:00 a.m. PST

This presentation will take you through the basics of DeviceAnywhere Test Center™, providing an end-to-end system for improving application development. Darren will explain how the time and expense associated with traditional mobile application development can be cut down using remote application testing. He will walk you through some of the key features of the DeviceAnywhere service, including:

• How to choose one of over 2,000 mobile devices to test on
• Accessing all the features of a mobile phone
• How to create screenshots and movies from devices
• How different people can work on the same devices remotely
• How to leverage the GPS-enabled devices on our network

Register for the DeviceAnywhere webinar>>

NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge® extends registration deadline to December 18, 2009 for India region

NAVTEQ has extended the registration deadline for the NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge has been extended one week from Friday, December 11, 2009 to Friday, December 18, 2009 for the India region. A completed solution is not required at the time of registration. All India registrants will have until January 29, 2010 to submit their solutions but must first complete registration. All applications submitted for the India region must contain localized NAVTEQ map data in order for them to be judged properly in the competition. Developers can download complimentary sample map data for India here: http://www.nn4d.com/site/global/market/lbs_challenge/develop/map_data/p_mapdata.jsp

We encourage you to also check out the geospatial platform tools available from NAVTEQ and our sponsors to assist you with your application development needs.

With India being the second largest mobile market in the world, there is a solid potential for adoption of LBS applications. India is a dynamic country with a diverse population and LBS applications could help provide solutions for many distinct consumer groups. A few examples of location-aware applications of relevance for the Indian market are:

• Pedestrian applications for urban areas could have wide appeal.
• Enterprise applications could help the many small business owners.
• Personal navigation for the growing middle-class who may soon be buying cars.

We are looking forward to seeing your applications in the first ever Global LBS Challenge – India. The regional winners of the Global LBS Challenge for India will be announced on April 29, 2010 in New Delhi.

The competition is open for pre-commercialized applications for any platform and any device, with a global prize pool of $10 million US. For more information on this year’s competition, go to http://www.lbschallenge.com/.

Sponsors for this year’s competition include: Alcatel-Lucent, AtlasCT, Bing Maps, BlackBerry (RIM), deCarta, DeviceAnywhere, DigitalGlobe, GPS Business News, HTC, Imagination Technologies, Intel, Mobile Distillery, Tanla and The Code Project.

First launched in 2003, the NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge is a world-wide competition conducted by NAVTEQ Network for Developers™ (NN4D), daring application developers around the world to build innovative location-based services (LBS) using dynamic positioning technology and NAVTEQ® maps. Integrating the accuracy and richness of NAVTEQ digital map data and LBS content facilitates the timely evolution of the next wave of location-aware applications.

The Global LBS Challenge has become the premier event in the LBS industry for shining the spotlight on global LBS innovation and opportunity. Over 32% of the finalists from the past six years have gone on to receive venture capital funding or launch commercially-distributed applications.

Registration deadlines for the five regions of the competition are as follow:

• EMEA: closed
• North America: closed
• India: December 18, 2009 (extended)
• South America: February 12, 2010
• Asia-Pacific (APAC): March 5, 2010

For more information, see the official contest rules at http://www.lbschallenge.com/.

How to make money with your LBS application

Tanla is a Global Sponsor of the 2010 NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge®. All developers registering for the 2010 Global LBS Challenge have unlimited access to the Tanla License Manager SDK. The new SDK release for the Symbian platform™ and Windows® Mobile has improved usability and more effort has been placed on integration support. With this new release Tanla wants to ensure easy deployment of Tanla License Manager.

If you missed Tanla’s recent technical webinar about how to use their License Manager, you can download and watch the recorded webinar or view the presentation on the NAVTEQ Network for Developers (NN4D) website.

Now you have a chance to learn a bit more about the commercial aspects and how you can make money with your application. Tune into the below NN4D webinar with Harri Myllylä, VP, Business Development, Tanla.

Title: You've got the app – HOW TO MAKE MONEY WITH IT!

When: Tuesday December 15th, 2009 at 8:00am UK / 10:00am Finland / 3:00pm Singapore

• How to reach conversion rate even over 30%?
• How to activate emotional buying behavior?
• How to access leading distribution channels?

Don’t miss this webinar with one of the sponsors of the 2010 NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge to learn how to use their License Manager to your benefit when commercializing your LBS application.

Register for the webinar here>>

NN4D sponsored event: LBS and Mobile SIGs present “LBS/Mobile Platforms Enabling Great Apps & Services” at event in California

Founded in 1993, the Wireless Communications Alliance (WCA) is a Silicon Valley-based, nonprofit corporation dedicated to the mutual benefit of Northern California companies and organizations involved in wireless communication technologies.

WCA's Location-Based Services (LBS) and Mobile Special Interest Groups (SIGs) will organize an evening with interesting presentations, wine and cheese in good holiday spirit. The theme for the evening is “LBS/Mobile Platforms Enabling Great Apps & Services”.

The event is sponsored by NAVTEQ Network for Developers (NN4D) and will be held at the Nokia Campus in Mountain View (CA), USA on Thursday, December 3, between 4pm and 7pm.

Hear about solutions that allow an application to establish a very quick and accurate location for a place or person, technology that allows for behavioral analysis based on location history, a platform allowing a developer to create apps which do not need to be ported across different platforms (like Android, iPhone, Palm, etc), a platform to test any application on any device anywhere, and much more. The below players presenting at this event are enabling the creation of better and more exciting mobile and LBS applications with amazing features to excite any consumer.

• Tony Jebara, CTO, Sense Networks: "Lifestyle Segmentation from Mobile Location and Call Data"
• Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen, VP of Business Development, Skyhook Wireless: "Good Location Matters"
• Leila Modarres, VP of Marketing, DeviceAnywhere: "Perfecting LBS Application Development"
• Adam Blum, CEO, Rhomobile: "Rapidly Mobilize Your Enterprise Apps to All Smartphones"
• Ellen Schwab, VP of Sales and Business Development, Telespree Communications: "Evolution of Wireless Device-based Self-service"
• Tom Owen, VP of Business Development, deCarta: "An Integrated Platform for Powering Local Mobile Search and Navigation"
• John Kavulich, Staff Manager Location Products and Services, Qualcomm: "Powerful and Precise Location Technology Enhancing the User Experience"

This SIG meeting promises to be an informative and fun party to get everyone into the holiday spirit and facilitate networking among the LBS and Mobile communities.

Cost of admission: $10 only. Register and pay in advance here>>

New “Visual Content” zone launched on NN4D

A new “Visual Content” zone was launched last week on the NAVTEQ Network for Developers™ (NN4D) website. NAVTEQ’s broad portfolio of visual content products enables applications to deliver the right content to consumers at the right time, content that enables enhanced navigation through visual guidance, providing the user with meaningful visual cues.

Screen grabs from demo video

With the NAVTEQ map supporting a growing range of 2D and 3D visual functionality for vehicle and pedestrian navigation experiences, NAVTEQ’s innovative approach yields high quality content designed to support differentiation in applications.

The Visual Content can be divided into three types with the following current product offerings:

• On the highway: Extended Lanes, Junction View Images, Sign-as-Real, Motorway Junction Objects and 3D Highway Entrance.
• In the city: Enhanced 2D Footprints, Brand Icons, 3D Landmarks and 3D City Models.
• Landscape: Digital Terrain Model and Enhanced Elevation Contours.

The Visual Content zone on NN4D is a dedicated area that helps developers create and prototype applications with advanced visual content from NAVTEQ by offering extensive sample data, clips, and documentation for simplifying guidance and orientation.

The zone is located in the Build section on the NN4D website under a new product zone, which now houses both the Visual Content zone as well and the pre-existing Location Content zone.

The Visual Content zone can be viewed here>>

More information:

• Technical White Papers & Specifications and Product Guides>>
• Visual Content demos and videos>>
• Demo of 3D graphics in LBS at SEE 2009 - part 1
• Demo of 3D graphics in LBS at SEE 2009 - part 2 - NaviGenie demo on the Sony Ericsson Satio

Prize pool for 2010 NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge® hits record $10M US with addition of new sponsors

Alcatel-Lucent, AtlasCT, DigitalGlobe, Imagination Technologies, Intel, Microsoft and Mobile Distillery join impressive list of sponsors for leading LBS developer competition

NAVTEQ yesterday announced the addition of seven new sponsors for the 2010 Global LBS Challenge, contributing to a new record global prize pool valued at over $10 million US.

“This year’s NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge will prove to be more rewarding for application developers than ever before, supporting them with cash awards, data licenses, software development kits (SDKs), application programming interfaces (APIs), porting and remote testing services as well as handsets for multiple platforms,” said Marc Naddell, vice president, partner & developer programs, NAVTEQ. “We are excited about the extensive backing and support from across the industry, helping to stimulate LBS innovation in new application areas, for new platforms and for new devices, benefiting both developers and users of location-aware solutions."

The new Global Sponsors for the 2010 Global LBS Challenge include:

DigitalGlobe – a leading global provider of commercial, high-resolution earth imagery products and services
As a Global Sponsor, DigitalGlobe (http://www.digitalglobe.com/) will provide contestants with access to an online ImageLibrary of continually updated, high-resolution satellite and aerial imagery designed to integrate seamlessly with NAVTEQ map data. Sourced from its own advanced satellite constellation, DigitalGlobe’s imagery solutions support a wide variety of defense, commercial and navigation applications. DigitalGlobe’s contributions to the global prize pool are 12-month ImageLibrary subscriptions for the Grand Prize Winners, and 6-month subscriptions for the two Runners-Up in each region, worth a total of $500,000. Through the Global LBS Challenge, DigitalGlobe aims to encourage image-rich applications that deliver the real world perspective.

Intel – providing support to developers of next-generation applications
Intel will support the 2010 Global LBS Challenge with SDKs, technical support and Intel® Atom™ processor based devices. Intel encourages developers to build innovative applications for next generation handhelds and Netbooks based on the Intel® Atom™ processor and Linux-based Moblin™ OS (www.moblinzone.com). This will allow developers to take advantage of premium PC like performance and deploy rich, innovative and engaging applications such as 3D navigation and augmented reality on a variety of designs. As a Global Sponsor, Intel will provide qualifying finalists from each region with a choice of a Netbook or a handheld.

Microsoft Corporation – providing an enterprise-class platform for building map-based solutions using Bing Maps
Microsoft will support the competition by giving all contestants access to rich tool sets, user forums and support for building map-based solutions through Bing Maps (www.microsoft.com/maps). The Bing Maps Platform is supported by flexible APIs, including its new Silverlight API, for developers to design and build customized, immersive end-user experiences. As a Global Sponsor, Microsoft will offer complimentary licenses to all finalists and winners to use the Bing Maps Platform for their commercial applications, at a value of in total $1 million US. Microsoft will provide each Grand Prize Winner with $50,000 US worth of Bing Maps licenses, the two Runners-Up in each region will receive $30,000 worth of licenses and all finalists will be granted $10,000 worth of licenses.

The new Regional Sponsors include:

Alcatel-Lucent – a leading provider of telecom hardware, software, solutions and services fostering new business models between service providers and Web 2.0 application developers
As a Regional Sponsor for North America, Alcatel-Lucent (http://www.alcatel-lucent.com/) is a leader in providing developers with seamless, secure access to the unique capabilities of service provider networks helping them create ‘mash up’ applications combining telecom functionality with Web-based capabilities. Alcatel-Lucent is providing 12 finalists with 6 months of free access to its Open API Service (http://developer.openapiservice.com/), bringing developers and service providers together seamlessly for rapid creation and testing of innovative applications. Prizes − totaling $50,000 US − include up to 10,000 free high-accuracy location queries per month, along with technical support from Alcatel-Lucent to facilitate the use of the Open API Service in conjunction with NAVTEQ map data.

AtlasCT – previous Global LBS Challenge finalist, developer and provider of worldwide location-based solutions offering SDKs for web and mobile platforms
AtlasCT (http://www.atlasct.com/) is a regional sponsor of the NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge in Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA) and North America regions, offering contestants its Atlas Mobile SDK including the Navigation and Multimedia packages for free. Compatible with HTC, LG, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and other devices, this SDK enables developers to easily create rich location-based applications within a few days. As a regional sponsor, AtlasCT will be granting a 1-year license to the Grand Prize Winners in the two regions to use the Atlas Mobile SDK, Atlas Web SDK, Atlas GIS or Atlas LBS for up to 9,000 monthly subscribers of their commercial applications, valued to in total $240,000.

NAVTEQ has been managing the Global LBS Challenge annually since 2003, recognized in the industry for stimulating innovation in location-aware applications. Conducted by NN4D across five different regions – EMEA, North America, South America, Asia-Pacific (APAC) and India – this is a world-wide competition challenging application developers around the world to build new applications using dynamic positioning technology and NAVTEQ® maps. In addition to the record global prize pool valued at over $10 million USD to be shared by the overall winners, “Best of” recognition awards will be awarded in nine categories to recognize achievements in particular areas.

Serving as Global Awards Sponsors will be:

Imagination Technologies – a market leader in graphics acceleration technology looking to boost development of mobile applications using 3D mapping and LBS features
Imagination Technologies and its POWERVR Insider program (http://www.powervrinsider.com/) collaborates with NAVTEQ Network for Developers™ (NN4D) to stimulate increased developer adoption of 3D graphics in navigation and LBS. As a Global Awards Sponsor of the 2010 NAVTEQ Global LBS Challenge, Imagination will nominate the “Most Innovative Use of Graphics” from the finalists for each of the five (5) regions in the competition. The regional award winners will all receive a hot new Netbook device, half a day of dedicated technical consultancy as well as demo space in Imagination’s booth at an event during 2010. A global ‘Best of’ winner in the category will be flown to the UK for two days of intensive support, training and fun with Imagination engineers.

Mobile Distillery – a leader in cross-platform software solutions and testing services for mobile application developers
Ensuring a mobile application to run on as many devices as possible is vital for volume business. Mobile Distillery is returning as a Global Awards Sponsor for the second year in a row and will be contributing $280,000 worth of licenses to this year’s global prize pool. All runners-up and Grand Prize Winners across all five regions will receive a 6-month license to Alembic, Mobile Distillery’s comprehensive device database, giving them access to thousands of fully tested characteristics on over 1,000 devices worldwide. Each Grand Prize Winner will also receive a 12-month license to Celsius, the industry leading mobile application development and porting platform, allowing them to easily target the widest range of handsets, including for example Nokia, BlackBerry®, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, LG and Android™ based phones.

For more information about this year’s competition, please visit http://www.lbschallenge.com/. Registration for India closes on December 11, 2009. A completed solution is not required at the time of registration.