The 10-cm long DASH, which stands for Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod, weighs only 16 grams, yet is able to run 15 times its body length per second. It has a uniquely flexible design from nearly all sides that allows it to survive pretty much anything, including a drop eight stories above the ground. It's actually made of what's basically laminated cardboard, which means it's a very cheap robot to build as well. Check out the video—this thing is crazy. [Thanks, Aaron!]

It's a Wi-Fi-wielding 3G QWERTY worldband (complete with international plugs!) Windows Mobile 6.1 smartphone that runs a palatable $50 with contract. It goes on sale online June 29 and in stores July 13th.

HTC OZONE BRINGS VERIZON WIRELESS' SMARTPHONE LINEUP TO NEW HEIGHTS

BASKING RIDGE, N.J., and BELLEVUE, Wash. – Verizon Wireless and HTC today introduce the Verizon Wireless HTC Ozone™. This easy-to-use smartphone combines a simple design with a host of connectivity options that include the nation's largest wireless 3G network, global roaming and Wi-Fi, making it a smart option and, at $49.99*, a great value for first-time smartphone users or savvy business professionals.

Available color: Black

Key features:

· Ergonomically-designed QWERTY keyboard for fast and easy typing

· Flexible connectivity options with Verizon Wireless' 3G network, global roaming capabilities and support for Wi-Fi

· 1500 mAh battery delivers extended operating time

· Includes international charging adapters to stay powered up while abroad

Lifestyle features:

· VZ NavigatorSM – get audible turn-by-turn directions to more than 15 million points of interest and share the directions with others

· Visual Voice Mail – view, delete, reply, listen to and forward voice mail messages without having to listen to prior messages or voice instructions

· Mobile IM – connect with friends on AOL® Instant Messenger, Windows® Messenger and Yahoo!® Messenger

· Mobile Email – access to popular e-mail services such as Yahoo!®, Hotmail®, AOL® and Windows® Live Seamless Microsoft® Exchange synchronization with Microsoft® Office Mobile for maximum productivity

· Access to most frequently used features with a simplified "sliding panel" user interface

· One-touch messaging key for quick connection to friends and family

* Price and availability:

· The HTC Ozone will be $49.99 after a $70 mail-in rebate with a new two-year customer agreement. Customers will receive the rebate in the form of a debit card; upon receipt, customers may use the card as cash anywhere debit cards are accepted.

· VZ Navigator is available for $9.99 monthly access, and Visual Voice Mail is available for $2.99 monthly access.

· Customers can purchase the HTC Ozone beginning June 29 online at www.verizonwireless.com, by calling 1-800-2 JOIN IN, or through business sales channels. It will be in Verizon Wireless Communications Stores on July 13. For additional information on Verizon Wireless products and services, visit a Verizon Wireless Communications Store, call 1-800-2 JOIN IN or go to www.verizonwireless.com.

Since we've played with the Snap (and liked it—warning, April Fools link), and the handset is rumored to be unusually cheap, the two items of interest here are pricing and date of availability. Despite this, T-Mobile neglected to include either of these things in their release, so we'll have to wait, or take the previously leaked July 1st date as fact. [BGR]

T-Mobile Dash 3G Helps Customers Stay Connected to Work and Life

Bellevue, Wash. – June 17, 2009 – T-Mobile USA, Inc. today announced the upcoming availability of its newest 3G-enabled smartphone, the T-Mobile® Dash 3GTM, offering a balance of personal and professional connections in a sleek design with faster data delivery and Web browsing via T-Mobile's high-speed 3G network and Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g).

The T-Mobile Dash 3G, designed by HTC and powered by Microsoft's Windows Mobile® 6.1, is available in a glossy-black finish with red accents, features a full-QWERTY keyboard, easy-to-use trackball and vibrant display. This latest version of the T-Mobile Dash delivers easy ways to stay connected and organized with voice calling, messaging, support for personal and business e-mail, GPS for location-based services, and synchronization with Microsoft Outlook®. Whether staying organized while traveling or simply staying connected with friends and family, the T-Mobile Dash 3G provides access to the life tools customers need in a small, sleek package.

"As millions of families prepare to hit the road this summer, T-Mobile is offering our first 3G-enabled Windows Mobile smartphone to help customers stay connected, organized and traveling in the right direction," said Travis Warren, director, product marketing, T-Mobile USA. "We're excited to offer the power and style of the T-Mobile Dash 3G with high-speed Internet access thanks to T-Mobile's rapidly expanding 3G network."

"HTC is designing products like the T-Mobile Dash 3G to appeal to the ever-growing number of customers who are using the empowering features of smartphones to benefit their busy lives," said Jason Mackenzie, vice president, HTC America. "HTC is pleased to continue its long history of working closely with T-Mobile as we today introduce the next generation of the popular T-Mobile Dash."

According to new research by Yankee Group, 41 percent of consumers are likely to choose a smartphone as their next mobile device.* As consumer demand for feature-rich phones increases, T-Mobile is responding with an expanding lineup of 3G-capable smartphones including the new T-Mobile Dash 3G.

T-Mobile continues to expand its high-speed 3G network in 2009 to cover approximately 200 million people across the United States by the end of the year. At the end of 2008, T-Mobile USA's 3G network was available to more than 100 million people in more than 130 U.S. cities.

The Price: Garmin says $800, but you can find it online for $690.

The Verdict: It's the best all-around GPS on the market, but there are too many halfway decent Garmin models for less than half the price.

The 880 isn't the first GPS with voice command, but it's definitely the best. The remote button that you strap to your steering wheel makes activating it easy, and being able to dictate addresses including obscure street names is only part of the fun. When you're in POI search, you can name popular locations ("Starbucks") or categories (it actually understands synonyms like "Fuel" and "Gas"). Most importantly, you can tap the button and say things like "Cancel Route" or "Volume Up," commands most likely to be issued while driving, ensuring you stay safer than if you were to try to do these things with your fingers while keeping your wheels on the road. The only problem with voice command is that, to function, it requires the remote (pictured above). If somehow you break off the remote or lose it, you will forever lose the ability to talk to your 880, so be careful.

As you can see in the video, with the exception of its inability to understand "Cancel" or "Exit" while performing certain functions, it responds extremely well to natural speech:

We've said repeatedly that Garmin is the best bet for anyone shopping for GPS, and the 880 demonstrates this to be the case. It doesn't mean it's perfect, it's just by far the least infuriating navigator on the road today. Garmin often adds features later than others, but this only strengthens its predominance, since those like TomTom and Magellan—not to mention the innovative but ailing Dash—rush revolutionary features without spending time on core interface issues, and fail because of it.

Some of the 880's perks do not get me excited: I have yet to meet a Bluetooth speakerphone that doesn't result in people yelling that they can't hear me, a problem having as much to do with every different phone's cheap-o Bluetooth chip, no doubt. I also am very underwhelmed by the MSN Direct service that the 880 offers ("free" for 3 months). Its main feature is the traffic reporting but that information, even in massive metro areas, has proven to me to be absolutely useless. The 880 is as dumb as the lowliest GPS when it comes to awareness, and my hope is that historic traffic trends will soon be better integrated at the map database level—i.e. with Navteq and Tele Atlas—in order to make routing more smart even without the need for connectivity or any kind of realtime guesswork.

Some of you may realize that this review is long overdue. One reason is that, when I first got the 880, it had some bugginess that I'm glad to say has been fixed with a firmware update. Another reason for the delay is that I wanted to see how long it would take to stop using the voice commands. Sadly, it didn't take very long, but in prepping for this review, I started using the voice commands more, and realized that it's an asset I shouldn't so readily overlook. Just don't lose the remote, or you lose the feature. [Product Page]

(Sorry for the cheesy video, blame TeleNav.) Other touted intertube-powered features include on-the-spot weather, restaurant reviews, commute alerts and address share (letting everyone know where you're at), though they're "in the works" so are part of "TeleNav's short-term road map." However, since it's not open sourced like Dash, we sadly won't be seeing anything like Twitter clients. Also, since it only uses GPRS, and not Wi-Fi like the Dash, I wonder how fast (or ungodly slow) the updates will be.

Also unlike Dash, they're starting at $300 right off the bat. Even if you forego the $12/month subscription, it's still pre-loaded with 11 million points of interest, and the usual TeleNav GPS features. Whether TeleNav's well-known name will help them out in a market so cutthroat Dash basically couldn't survive remains to be seen. And uh, honestly, we're still waiting for that iPhone app.

Actual device specs:

FEATURE DESCRIPTION
Dimensions 4.9L x 3.1W x 0.75H inches
12.5L x 8W x 1.9H cm
Weight 0.27 pounds (124 grams)
Screen Size 4.3 inches (10.9cm) diagonal, 16:9 aspect ratio
Display Resolution 480 x 272 pixels
Display Type TFT LCD touch screen
Speaker Built-in, high-quality speaker, 1 W
Headphone 3.5mm jack
Battery Life Up to 2.5 hours of normal use (five days in suspend mode)
Battery Type Rechargeable lithium-ion
GPS Chip Atlas III
Network Access TeleNav Connected Service uses cellular (GPRS)
Car Charger 12v car charger
Input: DC +12V
Output: +5V, 3A, via USB
Wall Charger AC wall charger
Input: AC 110~240V
DC +5V, 3A via USB
LED Indicators 1 red LED for charge indication
1 green LED for charged indication
2 blue LEDs for TeleNav Connected Service usage indication

[Telenav - Thanks tipster!]

The nav market is a tough one, and with the added economic difficulties, Dash feels it can do better work by focusing on their open-source OS, which they will then sell business-to-business. More important than the OS, which is fine but not fantastic, is the back end traffic mesh system. A Dash-powered mid-range Garmin nav sounds like a pretty appealing propect, and will help bring a Dash-like system to more people for less dough. New CEO Rob Currie also notes that the Dash's GPRS chip and 400MHz ARM processor are quickly being outpaced by even low-end mobiles, so a move toward adding Dash functionality to GPS-equipped smartphones sounds like a plan to me.

Dash is going to keep the Express back end running for existing owners, but no word on for how long; because these devices hold almost zero local data, once the service goes you will have yourself a nav that can't do much more than direct address routing. Dash friends, care to let us know how long we have? [GigaOM]

Let's start with the acronym: GPS stands for global positioning system. Originally a DARPA-funded joint project of the Air Force and Navy, this satellite network tells ya where stuff is, like bombers and cruise missiles in decades past, or you as of mid-2000 when the government made GPS of decent accuracy available for civilian electronics. (It was available before then, but wasn't good enough for reliable turn-by-turn app.) The soul of GPS is the constellation of at least 24 satellites way out in orbit. Signals from four separate birds are usually needed for a standard GPS receiver to peg your position.

The GPS goods most people are familiar with are ones you mount in your car (though like we said, GPS will fit just about anywhere now) with the biggest players being Garmin, TomTom and Magellan. They used to be a lot more expensive, but now you can get basic namebrand models for not much more than $200, and cheap knock-offs for even less.

At a basic level, these all operate the same way, with variations in feature sets and UI: Your GPS receiver picks up signals from orbiting satellites and plots your position accordingly on pre-loaded maps. (The maps themselves typically come from one of just two companies, Navteq and Tele Atlas.) More recently, live traffic info (or something close to it) to avoid the Monday jam courtesy of an overturned 18-wheeler of pig lard has been the goal, with the pricey (but awesome) Dash Express delivering the up to the minute goods via GPRS cellular connection.

While GPS has gotten better in your car and on your wrist, the real excitement is its movements into cellphones and other gadgets such as cameras for location-based services (and maybe ads) and tricks like geo-tagging. Sprint's Instinct phone, for instance, makes a big a deal out of having real GPS while the iPhone has less accurate triangulation via cellphone towers, since being accurate to within several blocks isn't nearly as helpful as knowing where you are within a couple of meters. Friend finders and kid locators are options on pretty much every carrier.

As GPS modules get smaller and less power-hungry, you can expect GPS to keep showing up in ever smaller and crazier gadgets, since it'll be cheap and easy to cram it in. Manufacturers on everything from laptops to shoes are getting in on GPS mania, so even if you never owned a GPS device, odds are, you soon will.

Other slightly less useful apps are Coldwell Banker's real estate search—only useful if you're actually looking for houses and like driving around aimlessly hoping you get lucky, and Funambol's calendar feature, which checks your calendar for appointment locations. Trapster is free, but we're not sure about the other apps (they may not be).

A commenter notes that some apps are limited by the UI. The Trapster app makes you keep searching for speed traps instead of just displaying them constantly on your UI. [Dash]

Google's will be available starting tomorrow; the MapQuest version (explained here and shown above) will launch later in the month. Of course, for the time being this will require a USB connection—unlike the Dash, which does it all wirelessly—so to call this process "hassle free" would be giving it too much credit. We still expect the nuvifone will be the real answer to all our Garmin-related prayers. In case this sounded familiar, TomTom already has an identical Google Maps feature. [Google Press Release; MapQuest Press Release]

Having the connectivity of both GPRS and Wi-Fi makes it instantly more useful than many products with static points-of-interest catalogs, no matter how many million are boasted. And the same networking that goes to the net to get data can be used in reverse: sending addresses and search criteria to the device from any computer takes a few seconds and no wires.

But it's not a clean victory for Dash—for all of the steps forward, the upstart misses some elements essential to any portable navigation device. Meanwhile, Garmin, Magellan and TomTom are racing with their own connected and crowd-sourced strategies. This is the opening salvo of what will eventually be a tough, possibly deadly battle. So far, however, Dash is in great shape.
What Dash Got
There are four compelling aspects to the Dash Express which are not found, as such, in other portable navigators on the market.

• Live real-time traffic - It's the biggest and most powerful of the four keys, mainly because of how badly GPS traffic reporting has sucked in the past. Dash builds a teamwork system not unlike the original Napster—you got data I want, I got data you want, and that central server will make sure the sharing happens in a fast and orderly manner. As you drive, you not only help others out, but you add useful data to the historical record, so that the plan for your own commute or Friday getaway could grow smarter. As we've said before, once each metro area is seeded with a few hundred Dash units, the traffic reporting becomes exponentially better. The funny thing is, what we've already seen, with just a handful of units on the road, was already better than anything to date thanks to the historical data which runs in 15 minute increments, and therefore knows the difference between weekends and rush hour. If you're wondering who is working on the traffic modeling, it's a couple of eggheaded PhDs in Traffic.

• Live search - Most navis have search features, but they only query a POI database of an average of 5 million or so. Dash only has 1 Million built-in points of interest, but its better 99% of the time. That's because it uses its GPRS cellular connection to ping Yahoo Local search for stuff, delivering better information in the exact same amount of time. You can save search terms you like as favorites, alongside addresses and, yes, standard POI categories. Oh, Yahoo local searches are returned by relevance, not sorted by proximity, but most things can be resorted and gas can even be resorted by price.

• MyDash web interface including Send2Car, GeoRSS and other features - With a quick browser plug-in, you can highlight any address and right-click, selecting the option "Send To Car." You can even highlight name and address, but for now you need to leave off the phone number. Within a second or two, the address pops up on the Dash, which could be at your side, or miles away. Blam found that entering addresses on the web interface was actually more effective than typing them on the Express, since the server can do a better job of fuzzy-matching the data you type. There are plug-ins to allow you to send any text to the Dash unit by right clicking text and selecting "Send to Car."

In MyDash, you can browse "saved searches" for dynamically updating data—a POI-like request ("CVS" or "Sushi") gives you a Yahoo Local search criteria that you can send to the Express. But you can also copy GeoRSS and KML feed URLs from around the net at sites like Yelp.com and Chowhound, containing more exotic and time-dependent stuff—"Nationwide Airport Delays" and "California Surf Report." For the most part, everything we tried worked, save a Craigslist RSS of Seattle real estate. (But GeoRSS feeds are kind of tricky to find in the wild.)

• Over-the-air updates - The Express uses any open Wi-Fi network it can to pull chunks of update down as you drive around. You can teach it your SSIDs and passwords for best Wi-Fi, but it's not necessary. Dash will deliver a few different kinds of update that we'll cover below; the important thing is to think about the last time you updated your Garmin or TomTom. Your answer is most likely "never." If you have, you probably paid a lot to do it. Dash of courses charges $10 to $13 per month subscription, but promises a constantly evolving platform in return.
-Traffic data will be updated monthly, using historical data from Dash drivers. That means that the first one will be a good 'un, as the first crop of users starts putting on the mileage.
-Big map updates will come every six months or so, about the same time Tele Atlas will release to other vendors.
-The first major software updates with bug fixes and new features (see below) will come this summer, and then every three months or so.
-MyDash servers can be updated on a weekly basis, so new web features could be appearing all the time—not that they will.

Here's a video that explains it all very well, even if it does paint it rosier than we found in real life. (That's the part we get into next.)

The Test
For our testing, Brian drove from SF to Tahoe and back with hours of city driving; I did a roundtrip from New York up to Boston. When you enter a destination, Dash looks at mileage, road speed and known traffic in planning the trip, devising up to three possible routes. In my case, it never did more than two suggested routes, and usually the first was obviously the best, but it was reassuring that it had backups in mind.

Traffic currently works with a combination of historic data and real-time data. A solid red, orange, yellow or green line means that either a Dash driver is currently on that road, or the historic data has proven so accurate it's as good as realtime fact. Broken lines, commonly seen in this pre-launch period, show shakier historic data, or data from supplier Inrix that Dash hasn't verified independently. Inrix doesn't provde data for local roads, though, only highways. Any data on local roads comes from Dash alone.

Blam says:

Getting across town during rush hour is challenging even for locals. Using Dash and trusting its copious historical information about what side streets would be empty and which would be crowded, I managed to get across town to pick up a friend and back to my place to meet another darting through side streets I'd never even known of despite living in SF almost eight years. I can't stress how useful it is to have all this data, typically the kind you see on Google Maps on highways only, in my car. Even though Dash didn't reroute me automatically (It only opts to reroute you on drastic changes in arrival time), it was easy enough to follow the green lines and avoid the reds. Over time, even more local roads will be filled in with colored squigglies.

Dash uses traffic data to calculate the original route, so it doesn't automatically re-route you just because you hit a patch of congestion. Instead, it waits until your trip has been slowed by unplanned traffic. Any trip that lasts one hour or less gets delayed five unexpected minutes, and the Express offers to re-check the routes to see if there's a better way.

At one point just outside of Boston, when I had to drive through the same congested intersection several times, it was fun to see how the intersection's condition changed from moment to moment. (Sadly, I think I was the source of the data, which meant that I was unable to benefit from it. A crowdsource of one ain't much of a crowd... or source.)

Again, what's cool is that traffic data in the boonies will soon be available as historical or live meshed data as people drive through it. The Dash servers are constantly recording (without identifying) patterns.

To get a better idea of what real-time traffic looks like, check out this video of changes to New York City's traffic yesterday from about 3pm to just after 6pm. Pick a road and note how things get stickier as rush hour approaches.
Blam and I both suffered some routing issues, however. Mine was a traditional problem—a bad bit of map data (Tele Atlas) telling me to turn left when I couldn't, and haven't been able to do for years.

This is an unexpected usage model of the Dash. Sitting with it indoors, on Wi-Fi, as it updates the traffic model. When the traffic dies down, you can road trip. But Blam's situation was a bit stickier...

I'd been eyeing my Dash GPS on my desk all day, using it to tell when the drive from SF to Tahoe to drop below the 3.5 hour mark. At 11pm, on a Thursday before Easter, it was time to go. I loaded up the car, drove 20 minutes to the Bay Bridge, and jammed into some 0 MPH road flow. The Dash had reported yellow and red, earlier, but I didn't believe it so late at night (my fault). Right then, the other GPS I was using for a benchmark, a Garmin Nuvi, suddenly lit up with traffic data that the bridge was closed and rerouted me. Dash, for all its IP connectivity, had no clue, and continued to have no clue as the police redirected me to an exit. I later found out that road closure data wouldn't be on Dash until a later software update. And without that data, the Dash merely assumed I was exiting the highway of my own accord. The rest of the Dash users behind me would have no idea of the closing, either.

Competing With Other PNDs
Overall, as a portable navigation device, it was fairly responsive. I'd put its user interface somewhere between a Garmin (on the high side) and a TomTom (slightly lower down)—not counting the extra dimension of a web interface, of course. But while driving around, the Dash would occasionally turn bush-league, pulling amateur mistakes like being slow to recalculate after a missed turn.

Some of our other troubles pointed out other standard PND features that the Express is still missing:
• Scheduled road closures generally make it into any device with some kind of connectivity, be it FM or MSN Direct.
• Other navigators can string together several destinations as waypoints, where the Express has only a one-track mind.
• When heading into a turn, other navigators tend to zoom in to show key details—some newer TomToms and Navigons even specifically point out the lane issues. The Express has none of that.
• When the GPRS connectivity dies, Dash says the Express has just 1 million catalogued points-of-interest (others have 4-12m, and man, did we feel the lack of POI when the connection went down). The rest, of course, come from connectivity. But if you're out in the middle of nowhere with no service, you get the most essential stuff (gas, hotel, hospital, airport) but you don't get as many listings for luxury or tourist spots (Blam's favorite ski resort) as other PNDs.
• When redrawing maps and calculating routes, all that traffic data causes big lagtimes in zooming and setting course. This also caused delays in rerouting after missing a turn.
• Many GPS devices like Garmin's Nuvi line have language and currency translators for travellers, MP3 playback (lame), Bluetooth dialing and speakerphone, FM transmitters.
• This thing is big. And the mount looks like a crane arm. It is giant.
• UI not as clear as a Garmin's.
• The volume goes to 11, and yes, it is as loud as 11/10 should be, although sometimes overdriven a bit (crackly).
• The voice sounds like speak and spell had a daughter with Borat. I mean, a GPS shouldn't pronounce avenue, "oovenue."

Promises and Teases
Dash may be taking our laundry list of basic stuff to heart, but it's also hinting at plenty more crazy, unheard-of features in the updates to come:

• Automated correction of maps based on car flow that either wasn't there before, or has suddenly stopped - "We don't do any of that now, but that's something we think about a lot."

• Learning routes from drivers - People who know great shortcuts can eventually be traced (anonymously), and their routes can be incorporated into the Dash's own routing algorithms. "That's super important for the future."

• Real-time traffic data appearing on MyDash website, and not just on the Dash Express screen - "We're big believers in that, not just on the device but when they're sitting at their desk."

• Third-party services - There's an API for outside developers, and there was talk of some of these hitting at launch, but soon users will be able to pick through new apps and send them to their Express. "We are working with companies. We can't tell you who but our goal in this area is to make this as easy as humanly possible." Zillow, that real estate program that can detail the price of almost any house, was demoed in the past, but will not ship on the device. Driving up to a house and pricing it is amazing:

The Dash isn't perfect today, but it is great, and will be incredibly powerful in the future. Even with fewer than 20 production units in the SF bay area during testing, the traffic's historical and even Dash user updates were extremely useful. Traffic performance today is potent thanks to the historical data and its 15 minute granularity, and will undoubtedly get better by the day as more users sign on (live data is actually minute to minute.) The connectivity with Yahoo! works to give you unlimited POIs as long as your GPRS connection is there. And although the community of shared custom searches will thicken out later, programming your own is not going to be easy for your mom, ever. Ultimately, there's a certain lack of polish compared to the big Garmin and TomTom devices, in terms of UI and odd features. But the new lower price helps take away some of the pain, even when considering the subscription price of $10-$13 a month.

After a combined 1000+ miles of driving with Dash in a week, Blam and I agree. Geek to geek, we'd say go ahead and buy with confidence based on the IP features and powerful traffic features alone. And know that this thing will only get better in the future.

(Congrats, Dash, on building a great first product. But don't forget to keep improving this thing for your early adopters.)