I’m not precisely the target market for a GPS device. I don’t have a car, and I live in a city where most streets are on a grid. All you really need to know when getting around Manhattan is that street numbers increase when you’re traveling north and avenue numbers get larger when you’re headed West. And forget about going south of Houston, where logic does not apply.

Yet Verizon Wireless has come up with a way to entice even citizens like me to sign up for its flagship mobile navigation service. I recently tested the most recent iteration [version 4] of its VZ Navigator GPS, powered by Networks in Motion. I found it useful not just for finding my way around but additionally for coming up with a host of things to do once I got to my destination. That’s a huge improvement by the old version, which was limited mainly to doling out driving directions.

Great

Introduced in April, the VZ Navigator offers up alerts for concerts, movies, musicals, plays, and other activities near the user’s location. The service, which like version 3 still costs $9.99 a month or $2.99 for one-day use, plus includes data on traffic and local weather and even helps you find gas stations in the area.

VZ Navigator’s traffic updates use info from traffic.com and a nifty feature from Networks In Motion that is designed to watchful drivers to incidents as soon as there is news about them. Competing services check for traffic updates in 10 minute intervals, leading to some delays.

The service additionally has a new viewing option that lets users see the map in 3-D. I’m not certain it adds all that much. I found the 2-D version, available in the earlier iteration, more straightforward.

Of all the new features, the event and movie listings…

Original post by Top Tech News