Android & Google Maps

Came across this announcement about Google Maps on Android:
http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2009/10/announcing-google-maps-navigation-for.html

I thought this is really cool given it is bringing the power of Cloud Computing to everybody's palm. Most important of all, this is free to the end consumer. I really hope the service works, and hope Google invests enough money to make it available to everybody in the world.

I have a Garmin in my car, but I always felt Google Maps are much better:

• Information is more accurate and up-to-date (Garmin/Navteq has 1000 employees to collect map data, Google has millions - advantage of crowd-sourcing)
• User-interface (Garmin is pretty bad here - no word-completions, no good search interface)
• Computing power (You can never beat the cloud - it takes 5 minutes to zoom the picture on Garmin)
• Cost - I paid $400 for my Garmin, have to update the data every year and more if I want POI data

If I can get more accurate information for free - I don't see a reason why I should buy another GPS device. Effectively Google is killing the entire auto/mobile GPS industry (>$10billion?) with this one announcement. Garmin makes 70% of its revenues from auto segment - and I am sure it will see some rapid declines there. You should feel for Nokia - it bought Navteq for $8billion in 2007 (on a company that was making ~$500 mil in annual revenues) - I can bet Navteq will be worth lot less than $8B in the coming years.

Overall, I think this is a significant event to the mobile industry, and very good for the world -  it redefines mobility and it will have a similar effect that email had during the 1990s. It would have taken decades for this democratization of location data - if we left it to the current GPS vendors.

This service can be a very good move from Google's point of view:

• More android based devices in the market, and more users for Google Maps
• Better map accuracy (crowd sourcing) than competing vendors
• More ad-revenues for Google (they now know where you are in addition to what you think)
• More cloud-based services for the mobile users from Google (economies of scale & scope for Google)

Of course, I am discounting the fact that Google will become the super cop - and will know every bit about you: what you think (your search terms), all your favorite locations (including where your friends live), all the businesses you visit etc. But again, most telecom companies already track lot more information about you (how much time are you on phone/online/watching-TV/resting, which urls you visit, whom do you call & with what frequency, who are your friends etc.), but never give you anything for free in return. So - not much to complain there.

On a philosophical note, it makes you wonder what will happen to humans in another 100 years: everybody follows directions from one of these GPS clouds, and there is a possibility we completely lose our map reading skills - the genetic code that our ancestors so patiently built over the past 100,000 years.

I can imagine a couple of science-fiction movies on this theme: somebody hacking the GPS cloud and making drones out of humanity, all GPS systems destroyed by terrorists causing mayhem everywhere (airlines/marine/auto navigation systems all driven by GPS), far into the future - humans lose their dominant species status to rats - because of the poor map-reading skills. If these movies are already made, pardon my ignorance.

I had Garmin for the past 4 years, and  I am not proud to admit that I am addicted to it - I just follow the directions given out my Garmin, and don't care to remember if I visited the place a hundred times before.

Running, Evolution & Health

After I heard about persistent hunting, and how early humans used their ability to regulate body temperatures (through sweating) as a competitive advantage in hunting; I thought running is part of our genetic code, and that every one of us can run long distances.

I also believed that running and exercise are good for health, and I used to spend 2 hours a day in the gym burning 800 to 900 calories a day (4 miles of running, 6 to 10 miles of cycling, and 30 minutes of weight-lifting - four days a week). I used to feel good about my health during these periods of exercise (possible runner's rush). It has been a while since I ran that long, and feel guilty these days for bowing to worldly pleasures and not going to the gym.

But, I came across a couple of articles over the past few weeks that made me re-think about both of these assumptions, and gave me a reason to maintain the statusquo (running vs. sitting on the couch - it is an easy choice I guess :)) :

Here are the data points I am talking about:

• Recent deaths of marathoners: Detroit (3 deaths), San Jose(2 deaths), NY (2 deaths) - in all the these incidents, the runners who died went through rigorous training for the event. While 7 deaths is a very small percentage of the millions who run marathons (statistically insignificant to draw any conclusions), it still is something to think about (psychological impact) for a would-be marathon runner. (Imagine a gamble with the following payoffs - you will win $1 mil 99.9% of the time,  you will lose & die 0.1% of the time - will you play that game?)
• A blog in NYT (14th Oct, 2009) talks about how intense exercise reduces our immunity: The article cites studies done by multiple research groups about the relationship between exercise and immunity - and concludes that intense exercise (defined as a workout or race of an hour or more during which your heart rate and respiration soar and you feel as if you are working hard) can significantly reduce your immunity; and that you are better off doing something productive (like watching TV) than running.

I guess - after thousands of years of relative-sedentary life style of the agrarian societies, running is no more an evolutionary in-thing; and it is possible mate-selection is not happening based on good running abilities.