Jenneth Orantia17 June 2008, 6:00 PM
Sat-nav leader TomTom is now in bed with Google Maps and Apple iPhone. So are they good lovers?
The next time you look up an address in Google Maps, you can elect to send the address to your TomTom device to get it to do all the navigation crunching for you. It's a neat idea that augments the TomTom's points of interest database, but it's not without its flaws. If you're like us, and keep your sat-nav locked up in the glove box for easy access, you'll have to retrieve it from the car, hook it up to your PC, look up the address in Google Maps, then launch the desktop TomTom HOME software (if you've even bothered installing it in the first place) to initiate the transfer.
Plus, if you've gone to the trouble of looking up the address in Google Maps, surely it's more efficient to take that extra second to generate directions online rather than going to the trouble of using the Send to GPS feature? Or – and now we’re going out on a limb here – you could just manually input the address into the TomTom device using its standard address lookup feature. It may not be as glamorous as relying on the Oracle known as Google, but it’s certainly faster and involves less futzing around.
This Google Maps integration mimics TomTom’s “
Add to TomTom” web feature, which lets website owners embed a ‘Add to TomTom’ button on their page to make it easier for visitors to find them. It still requires you to hook your device up to the PC and transfer the address via the TomTom HOME software, but at least it’s one less hoop to jump through.
In other news, rumour has it that TomTom has been working on a version of its Navigator software – already available for Windows Mobile, Palm and Series 60 in certain regions – for the newly-minted iPhone 3G. According to
MacNN, one of the company’s French representatives, Yann Lafargue, has confirmed that some of TomTom’s engineers have a working version of the software on the iPhone, but as yet are investigating whether they’ll get Apple’s blessing to launch it through the App Store. When asked to comment on the availability of TomTom Navigator for the iPhone 3G, local reps replied that they would issue a press release “if and when an announcement is made”.