I noticed it a few weeks ago when I saw that the German GPS navigation company Navigon provided their navigation software for the iPhone that they quickly showed up in the Top 10 list in the AppStore.

Now Navigon is number one paid app in the Navigation category and based on the huge number of reviews (250) in a league with e.g. the very popular game Brain Challenge.

Navigon offers two versions currently: a European and a D-A-CH (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). It supports also many languages: English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Dutch and will have even more in the near future.

While the price is very high for an iPhone app (105 CHF and 69 CHF) for the two versions it is relatively cheap compared to buying a complete navigation device. Also this app seems to close a gap that neither Apple nor Google’s Android phone could close so far (not to mention the mobile operators who are loosing out it seems once more here too) and that is for a professional navigation system. There are GoogleMaps based GPS projects under way, but they are still in a stage where I would not use it and rely on it to find my way on time to a meeting in a new place. Of course they will improve over time as well but I think this will take a while and possibly never reach the quality of Navigon.

Now that Navigon has started this they should not stop but expand the functionality to much more location based services and join forces with many other apps that you can find already in the AppStore. They could become a platform for many of them. If they take that opportunity will have to be seen though. Navigon being a German company I doubt that they will succeed in this or even try as this is not something that comes natural to German companies.  They very typically stick to their own ideas and don’t use extensive partnering as a way to distribute their brands. That’s one of the reasons also why hardly any German software company was able to build an international success unlike so many US software providers. But maybe I am wrong and if so Navigon could have a stellar rise from here. Let’s see…

Today Google Germany made an agreement with the German authorities to allow people to opt out of Google Street View when they don’t like their property or personal things being displayed in Google maps. This was a pre-emptive move to avoid any legal actions from privacy protection groups or others. Currently there are no laws in Germany though that would prohibit Google from driving around with their 360 degree view cameras, recording it and then displaying it in Google maps.

Now I have read about a new service from a Dutch company - Layar - that allows you to view your environment and then get maps and any other location-specific information displayed, overlaid in real-time.

The video above explains it well, so watch it if you are interested. It looks quite promising and, if it catches on, could mean another SMS-style success or maybe not. :-)  Seeing my kids playing with their Nintendo DS camera enthusiastically, I think though this could well show the future of where location-based services are going.

Layar was developed by this company SPRX Mobile. Layar works wih Android on the HTC Magic but a prime target is the new iPhone 3G S as they mention. The whole approach is btw called augmented reality (AR) browser, just in case you did not know.

These are exciting times - from an innovation point of view - for web collaboration tools. The last weeks brought major news from Google and Adobe who are both pushing hard on web tools now.

Over the last two weeks I have been trying out GoogleDocs and using it as much as possible. While it performs well and loading pages is very fast, there is still some work ahead for Google to make it a mainstream daily business tool. For example, the file upload limitations were a big problem for me as our presentations are usually big and to have an only 500k doc size limit means I cannot use it other than for creating new presentations. The text editor is usable, although I had problems here too uploading our company Word template. It did not do that properly, which means I would have to create a new theme as well to be able to use it. I did not try yet the collaboration functions but will do so shortly. Overall this was a promising but not fully satisfying experience.

So when Adobe announced its acrobat.com platform, I was ready to try it out as well and see if it is more suitable for daily work.  The presentation tool did not allow me to uplaod any presentations at all, though. Maybe it is because that they have not opened up that feature to international users or it is not yet supported. I did not further investigate as I had no time to fiddle around with something so basic. To create new presentations though is - WOW - very, very cool. Excellent graphics and templates that make creating a presentation a very enjoyable experience. The GUI is Apple-like but as far as I can tell (I am still not a Mac user) even better. The best was the sharing function, though that provides nearly the same features as a GoToMeeting or Webex but also here looks actually nicer and impressive. Not surprisingly for Adobe the PDF online viewer is fast and very well done too.

So as a first and not final summary of my excursion into a very interesting new web collaboration software world, I must say that Adobe’s online sharing ConnectNow is something we will use for sure and I can highly recommend. The online text editors have not yet convinced me, although I will keep GoogleDocs here on my radar screen and if they manage to do even more good things then maybe it can replace Word. For now it won’t be able to do that though.

Last, but not least, if both companies could combine the best that they have then I guess they could really threaten Microsoft. Of course that won’t happen as you can also see with the fact that Adobe’s acrobat.com does currently not support Google’s Chrome browser. Which is a sign that they see each other more as competitors than partners.

This long time discussion is still open, as viewed on Bazaarvoice’s blog and classic post by Pete Blackshaw from whom also comes the table below. He thinks marketers are still in control - I guess he simply has to.

This is a great tool to visualize what social networks dominate in the world. Despite the fact that Facebook is present in most of the countries in the world, QQ in China is the largest social network in the world with 300 million active accounts vs. 200 million at Facebook. As Vincos writes on his blog:

Some visible patterns to highlight:

- Facebook has almost captured Europe and is extending its dominance, more than 200 million users
- QQ is the leader in China and the largest social network in the world (300 million active accounts)
- MySpace lost its leadership everywhere (except in Guam)
- V Kontakte is the most popular in the Russian territories
- Orkut is strong in India and Brazil
- Hi5 is leading in Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and other countries such as Portugal, Mongolia, Romania
- Odnoklassniki is strong in some former Soviet Union territories
- Maktoob is the most important Arab community/portal

Other country specific social networks:

- Iwiw in Hungary
- Nasza-klasa in Poland
- Cyworld in South Korea
- Friendster in the Philippines
- Hives in the Netherlands
- Lidé in the Czech Republic
- Mixi in Japan
- One in Latvia and Lithuania
- Wretch in Taiwan
- Zing in Vietnam

Twitter triggers a lot of discussion about its usefulness and funny stuff as well like the video below. While I personally don’t Twitter - yet -I understand why it might be attractive to use by many. It is in my opinion the next generation of SMS which has - also very unexpectedly at the time when it started - been a huge success ever since and is still today a BIG revenue source for mobile operators. If I were an operator or SMS service provider I would be quite concerned right now, though, as Twitter might be stealing your clients. Best way to protect yourself is getting active by linking your service to Twitter or build something that is Twitter-like. Technically it is dead easy, to make it a widespread success a totally different story though.

Latest: Harvard has just published a report on the use of Twitter. The data shows that Twitter is tested by many but then never ever used again. Also it is a broadcast rather than a one-to-one personal communication tool. So I guess not an SMS challenger right now, although I think that’s what it could be used easily if not now then soon.

There are rumors that Apple spreads rumors prior to new product announcements itself to create buzz. What has been rumors and what is now reality you can read here. To me the three best things of the new iPhone are: higher speed (2x, PAsemi chip ?), longer battery runtime (not for 3G operations though), improved OS with many new features. Looks like that Apple has used this new product release primarily to fix some major flaws such as poor battery runtime and also added some software features such as copy/paste that the masses were annoyed about or were badly missing.

Speaking for myself, I think this is not enough news to go back to an iPhone so I will keep my iPod Touch and a super thin Samsung mobile phone with which I am doing fine. The new OS upgrade I will do of course and welcome.