“It lists thousands of kosher restaurants and includes the Book of Psalms, the three daily prayer services, the Traveler’s Prayer, a Hebrew calendar, and two versions of Grace After Meals.” Apparently GPS and Cell Phones are OK as long as there’s none of that dirty internet on them. Nice idea.

I wonder if it shuts down automatically on Friday night? Here are some other features I heard they are including:

1) Default voice of Jackie Mason
2) Yells at you in “Mother-In-Law Voice” when you miss your turn.
3) POI are all Doctor’s offices, mostly podiatrists and urologists

4) Special mode that guides by landmarks: “Make a right when you get to the hospital where Uncle Mort had his goiter removed…”

5) Speed Warnings over 25 MPH: “Oy Vey! You’re going too fast! You’re driving like a meshuginah”
6) Media Player preloaded with Yentl, the Jazz Singer, and Fiddler on the Roof
7) Routes you half-way through every trip to visit your Grandmother
8 ) Warns you when powering up that you look a little thin. “Have you been eating enough? Maybe you should have a nosh before you leave.”
9) Unfortunately, maps are only available for Boca Raton and the lower East Side of New York
10) Hot key to call your Grandson for help using the damn thing

Google very recently released some nifty new mobile software. Google Latitude, once installed on your mobile device, allows you to see where your Google Contacts are in real time. I downloaded this onto my BlackJack II.

After opting in for Latitude and then getting your buddies to do the same, your contacts show up with their respective avatars on the familiar Google Map.

I think this is a nice idea. Not sure how it really would be of much use, but who knows.  It will fall back to the “My Location”-cell tower based positioning if necessary.

There are a bunch of apps available for the Iphone which perform similar functions.  However,  on WinMO and Android, you can have tasks running in the background.

Interesting Feature: When you exit Google Maps on WinMo after enabling Latitude, you’re prompted whether you want to continue to send your location data to Google or not.  On my phone, at least, it has continued to update my location, despite not having Google Maps running. It’s actually kind of weird. Not sure how often it polls the GPS if you leave it running in the background. Could kill the battery quick.

Kudos, though,  to Google for attempting to create a cross-platform location-based service.  I think its important with GPS’ radios making their way into everyone’s smartphones, that there be some services available across all platforms. Google and their maps suite is the only product I’m aware of available for all the popular mobile formats- Blackberry, IPhone, Windows Mobile, Android.

Try it out here for yourself…

Here’s a video of it running on Android: