A Dash Review and House of Cards

Written by Mike on May 2, 2008 – 10:20 pm - 77 views

Hi folks. Some notes for today…

Two-Way Dept: Seems that OEM two-way data PNDs have been around for a while… at least in Japan. I came across this article with some information about the expected boom in growth of two-way PND devices, however it doesn’t really give specifics on current devices. Expectation is that the OEM market will become a growing and driving factor in the future of this type of technology. Seems pretty logical that this concept will be adapted in that fashion. It gives an ongoing revenue stream to car manufacturers… get your hands deeper in someones pockets (aka OnStar) …and why not make more money.

Review Seekers Dept: Click Here for a Dash Express review from Geardiary.com in which the author makes a few interesting points. He brings up the issue of privacy concerns regarding your Dash “trail.” This thought had occurred to me as well, as I watched my singular path being recorded around my area. It appears to me, though, Dash’s traffic trace does not include neighborhood streets, but regardless, I guess you could search around on your Dash and find peoples driving routes in certain areas. Additionally, he has an excellent point about the “sharing” of your traffic data if you are no longer (or not) a subscriber. Is it still happening? And– are they still using you to harvest information without the benefit of you receiving the traffic data? Unknown. My hunch would be that they don’t get the GSM bandwidth for free…and as such part of your monthly fee goes to pay for that airtime to wireless carriers. So, my gut feeling is that “no pay-eee no trace-eee.” But that can depend on the type of arrangement they have with wireless carriers (e.g. bulk buying of chunks of bandwidth.)

Radiohead is genius Dept: …and why not. Radiohead did a great version of House of Cards on Conan the other night. Take a look: