Corporate Blog

Whether you are a current Gokivo user, or a perspective user who is thinking about giving it a try, we have good news…We’re lowering prices!

Unlike some of the deals you may see in the car lot, where you get a great price but find out the car is missing a back seat, we are lowering prices the old fashioned way—by simply dropping the price without removing any of the features.

For the Gokivo user who may only need navigation sparingly, we still offer a “pay as you go system” where you can sign up for 30 days without any commitment. This was recently lowered to only $4.99/month.

For those of us out there though who know that we need navigation year-round (the first step is admitting you have a problem), we are now offering an annual pricing option. For just $39.99, users can sign up for a whole year of Gokivo and save over 30% on the month to month price.

We’re hoping that the lower prices will encourage some people who may be on the fence to give Gokivo a try. If you decide to try it out for the first time and have some questions about the product, check out http://www.gokivo.com, or shoot us an email at info@networksinmotion.com.

As you may have seen, Google yesterday released a turn-by-turn mobile navigation app, Google Maps Navigator. At this point though, it will only be available on phones that run the Android 2.0 operating system – there’s only one currently on the market – and only as a beta release.

Here at Networks In Motion, we recognize that one of the things that make location-based services so complicated is that they have to work on a number of platforms, devices, and firmware updates. Not only do we recognize this complexity, but to ensure that you will have a great experience, we have invested hundreds of man-years working with handset vendors, data providers, and carrier partners to deliver a consistent service that is bulletproof and tested with the equivalent of decades of refinements. 

We wonder, if this turn-by-turn navigation app is part of the Android 2.0 operating system, then who will do all the porting, testing and integration for each new device, screen, chipset and firmware?  Who will the customer call when the unproven map data is wrong or when the beta service is down or unavailable?

Although Google is fortunate enough to have lots of money to subsidize this free product, bringing one unproven beta release to market does not make up for years of field-testing with millions of users. Your driving experience is important and it’s still unproven if Google’s new map database can work as a mission critical app like real-time car navigation.

One final note that concerns us: Sadly, Google is now attacking the most profitable part of the mobile software developer community. How will the Android operating system attract new developers to the platform when the owner routinely goes after the developers who are pioneers in proven mobile markets like location-based services? Just some food for thought.

You may have noticed that Apple has recently made it possible to develop apps that are free to download, yet still take advantage of the new in-app commerce system. We certainly did.

When we first released Gokivo, our original idea was to make it a free app, and then let people choose how many days of navigation they wanted to purchase once they were inside the app. This would provide a flexible pricing option, which would not force users to make a decision before they even downloaded the app.

Unfortunately, due to Apple’s policy, we were not able to do this. As a result, our first day in the App Store did not go as smoothly as we would have liked, and we had to change around our pricing.

Now that we have the opportunity though, we are reevaluating our pricing options. We understand the potential benefits that can come from having an app that is free to download, and we would love to give people the option to download the app and take advantage of our search functions for free, even if they didn’t want to pay for navigation.

At this point, we are going to weigh our options, but we would love to hear what you have to say. Send us your thoughts at info@networksinmotion.com, and let us know.

From the day we debuted the first turn-by-turn navigation app on the iPhone, we’ve been working non-stop to make sure we’re offering the best navigation experience available. But we’ve just gotten started. Things are about to get really exciting.

So for a limited time, we’re offering a limited number of iPhone users a chance to try Gokivo for free. Send us an email telling us in two sentences or less how Gokivo could help you find your way to work, school, movies, entertainment or other fun, and we’ll pay for a one-month trial of Gokivo—the best turn-by-turn app in the app store.
 
You won’t want to miss any of the exciting developments and improvements we have planned for Goikvo. So submit your two sentences and get all the deets on the free month by sending an email to nim@sutherlandgold.com.

Moving to a new city is an exciting event in life that can give people the feeling they are entering a whole new world of possibilities. There is something, however, that can cut down on the good feelings brought on by a move, and lead to frustration that will make you wish you never left your old neighborhood—getting lost.

To help you avoid those situations where you think you are only leaving your new house to pick up some milk at the local grocery store, and end up on the completely wrong side of town (not that anyone at NIM has ever experienced something like that…ahem…) we wanted to present NIM’s 5 tips for using GPS when moving to a new city.

1. Find the Essentials – The best way to start feeling at home in a new city is to make sure you always have access to the essentials. Grocery stores, movie theaters, auto repair shops, and depending on how stressful the move was, perhaps the local liquor store, are all key places to find early in your move. NIM Navigation apps have search functions that pinpoint all the local businesses close to your present location. Knowing the local businesses will always make you feel right at home.

2. Use GPS When Going to Work or Job Interviews – Nothing gives the wrong impression at a job interview or the first day of work like showing up late. These are exactly the type of situations that we create navigation products for. When you know you can’t be late, make sure you have navigation on you.

3. If You Have a Friend in the City—Take Advantage – Hanging out with a friend and having someone show you the local spots that aren’t in the guidebooks can be just what you need when moving to a new city. If there is someone you know in your new city, go pay them a visit. Many NIM navigation products have the option to pick out a friend from your address book, and it will immediately navigate you to their address.

4. Don’t Be Afraid to Use Your Navigation Device Outside of the Car – One of the key advantages of having navigation on your phone instead of an in-car system is that you can use the navigation anywhere. Even when walking, it is possible to get lost (some might say it is easier when walking), so just because navigation is traditionally thought of as something that you use while driving, don’t be afraid to pull it out when on foot.

5. Take Some Time To Just Drive Around – While being in an unfamiliar place can potentially be very exciting at first, it can also get old quickly. Learning your way around the neighborhood is not only an incredibly satisfying feeling, but it is essential for making your new city feel like home. There is no better way to do this than to just get in the car and drive. A navigation device can help you find places to drive to, inform you of traffic delays ahead, and most importantly, give you a peaceful state of mind, that no matter where you end up, you will be able to get home with no worries.

From everyone here at NIM, we would like to wish you a Happy Labor Day weekend.

We know that many people will take advantage of the long weekend with a trip somewhere, and whether you are going to a barbeque, visiting family, or taking that final trip of the summer to the beach, if you can remember to bring the sunscreen, we can cover you with the directions.

If you choose to stay at home, we hope you have a relaxing weekend, and if you do decide to take a trip somewhere, we wish you safe travels, warm weather, and hopefully no crying babies in the car (even the best navigation systems can’t help with that).

We’re very proud today to introduce the all new Gokivo GPS Navigator in the Apple app store. Just as we were the first company to offer you a turn-by-turn navigation solution for the iPhone, we are the first to offer an upgraded version with major enhancements.

The New York Times has already checked it out (review here: http://bit.ly/16g6tE) and said it was a “notable improvement,” and worked faster than the competition to locate and calculate directions. As you can imagine, we are excited by this validation, but this review is just the start. What’s even more important than getting great press is wowing our users with a great product.

Shortly after the app was introduced, our engineers discovered that the iPhone firmware contained idiosyncrasies that didn’t allow for optimal GPS performance. This realization, along with our invaluable feedback, gave us a mission to fix GPS performance on the iPhone, as well as making the interface more intuitive. In coordination with Apple, we set out to optimize the configuration to better sync the performance of complicated turn-by-turn navigation and made dozens of changes and enhancements. And that took us to one final (and lengthy) step. Test it, retest it, and then test it again for good measure. We wanted to be sure that we were delivering a product that would produce the kind of results you asked for.

Some of the areas that we were able to upgrade include:

• Improved GPS position tracking for precision accuracy on the road
• Enhanced search interface
• Improved navigation functionality for a more robust experience
• Audio clarity with enhanced voice-prompt sound volumes
• Improved performance and memory management

On top of these upgrades, we’ve introduced what we think is the most consumer-friendly pricing model of any turn-by-turn navigation app for the iPhone, with no heavy upfront fees or automatic subscription renewals. A 30-day pass for the app is just $9.99 and does not automatically renew.

On the iPhone App Store, developers are constantly improving their products. We didn’t hustle to become the first turn-by turn app for the iPhone just for the distinction of being first—although we are proud of that—we hustled so that we could get to work on building the next generation of our app, and that will continue as we build future generations.

Behind every successful tech company, there are usually some “mad scientist” types that are making everything happen. Here at NIM, our engineers have been hard at work with Gokivo and our partner solutions to make sure everything is rock solid. Sometimes though, engineers just need to build something cool for the heck of it.

NIM Labs was created to let our engineers do what they do best—create innovative, knock your socks off technology. With NIM Labs, we let our engineers take chances trying out new products and features—not knowing if they will ever make their way into one of our production applications.

We don’t have any expectations of what will come out of NIM Labs. We’re simply hoping to develop some innovative LBS features that will provide benefits to our customers (our “stretch goal” of a mobile nav equivalent to the Polio vaccine may not be realistic).

We can’t go into detail about everything going on in NIM Labs, both for competitive reasons, and because some of these projects are very experimental and will probably never come to fruition. With that said though, we would like to keep you updated on what is going on in NIM Labs. We will periodically sit down with the engineers, and, if we can understand their lingo, we’ll report back on what cool things they are cooking up.

If you have ideas about things you might like to see in a future version of Gokivo, leave a comment or drop us a line at info@networksinmotion.com. While we can’t promise results, we can promise that you will be heard, and we will pass along ideas to the “mad scientists” to see what they can do.

Shortly after we launched Gokivo on the iPhone, we began to hear user feedback about some anomalies with GPS performance that we’d never encountered before on other platforms. It seemed to us that people were saying the GPS was good, it just wasn’t great. So we dug in.

What we discovered working with Apple is that the firmware on the phone was not really optimized for turn-by-turn navigation, which requires some pretty complicated technology. To get turn-by-turn right, you have to send hundreds of messages to a handheld device at one time. You’ve got to tell the device where it is, which direction it’s about to turn and calculate real-time distance just to name a few of the complicated simultaneous actions that are occurring.

Turn-by-turn had never been done on the iPhone before, and by watching the first wave of Gokivo users, we ended up learning a lot about the platform. An advantage of being the first turn-by-turn app available is that a lot of people have had the chance to try Gokivo and tell us what they think.

We have heard your feedback, and we want you to know that improvements are on the way. In the coming days, we will roll out the latest version of Gokivo. Turn by Turn 2.0, you could say.

When we first launched Gokivo, there was some confusion about pricing, so we want to clarify that now. The app is going to cost $9.99, and that purchase will include the first 30 days of navigation. Once the first 30 days have passed, you will have the option to pay another $9.99 for the next 30 days. You will not have to download the app multiple times though.

For current Gokivo subscribers, we have good news…you will get 30 days of navigation for free! From the moment you download the new upgrade, you will have 30 days of navigation available (if you have previously paid for days left on your account, it will simply reset you to 30), and once those are over, you will be in the same boat as new subscribers and will have the option of whether you want to renew or not.

We are excited about the new upgrade, and can’t wait to hear your thoughts. Keep your eyes open on the app store, because we should be there any day now.

When taking a long road trip, having a GPS system is incredibly useful. You will usually be driving through unfamiliar territory, and trying to navigate the old fashioned way will only lead to frustration and a car filled with maps that refuse to fold back up.

While we can’t get you out of speeding tickets or make the trip go faster (well, unless there’s traffic, but we’ll have more on that later), we can give you our top 5 GPS tips for road trips.

1. Don’t always settle for fast food. While fast food meals can get you in and out quickly, sitting down for a meal can be just the break you need to recharge for the second half of the day. NIM navigation apps can let you search for whatever kind of food your mood may call for, so if you happen to feel like sushi for lunch, with mobile navigation, that is an option (unless you are in the Midwest—then sushi may be out of the way).

2. Prepare yourself for traffic. NIM navigation products can alert you when traffic is coming, and oftentimes give you an alternate route to take to avoid it. While there are still some times when it is impossible to avoid the traffic, we have found that if you know it is coming ahead of time, you can prepare yourself and adjust your mindset accordingly. Every little thing helps.

3. Never worry about gas (except for high prices). Many people who have been on road trips have at one point had the scary feeling that can creep up on us when we’re not paying attention—“I may run out of gas.” With mobile navigation devices, you can search the nearest gas stations, and never have to worry about running out.

4. Bring a car charger. There is really no other way to say this–running out of batteries is the worst. If your phone runs out of juice, not only will you not have access to the navigation, but you are also stuck without the other features of your phone, such as playing MP3s.

5. Don’t be afraid to take the scenic route. With the slightest bit of planning, NIM’s navigation products will enable you to get off the main road and take an alternate scenic route. On a long road trip, you never know when you’ll have a chance to detour through a beautiful national park. A road trip is a chance to see the country at its best, and a navigation device can help make sure you do.