Much ballyhooed satellite navigation system suffers technical setbacks and paucity of devices. Who will guide Father Frost?

By Julia Ioffe, contributor

Glonass staffers hope to compete with GPS. Photo: Glonass.

Late last month Moscow celebrated the birthday of Father Frost, the Russian iteration of Santa Claus, with a new-fangled announcement: Father Frost’s retinue would move through the holiday skies aided by Glonass, the Russian answer to GPS.

Eagerly waiting children could track his movement online, while he could simultaneously improve his gift-giving efficiency. “Now Father Frost can be sure,” his press release said. “He can monitor his helpers through the Internet, even when he himself leaves for another city.”

It is unclear, however, how well Glonass will be able to aid Team Frost. The Glonass network (much like America’s Global Positioning System, a Cold War defense and missile-tracking system that was eventually opened to civilian use) was envisioned as an equal competitor to its U.S. counterpart.

But Glossnass recently has suffered some technical setbacks. More

New software transforms your phone into a GPS device – and a pretty good one, too

Navigon's MobileNavigator app for the iPhone has features some standalone units lack. Photo: Navigon.

As my wife will tell you, I have a comically bad sense of direction. I once got lost driving home from the mall.

This makes me a prime candidate for a GPS device. I’ve used a few for brief stints, mostly on long road trips, but never got into the habit of using one for everyday errands. There are a couple of reasons for that. For one, it’s a hassle to dig the thing out of the glove compartment. For another, entering an address on most of these things is a crazy-making experience.

My perspective changed recently, though, when I bought a new GPS unit for $70. Well, that’s not exactly what happened. I actually downloaded a GPS-based iPhone (AAPL) app for $70.

Yes, 70. Seven-zero. I’ll be the first to admit that it sounds crazy to pay that much for software that runs on a phone. The overwhelming majority of phone apps out there cost between 99 cents and $10. More

How technology is aiding – and shaping – the growing mobile workforce

By Greg Harper, president of Runzheimer International

Harper likes GPS and web-based services. Photo: Runzheimer Int'l.

A couple of decades ago few CEOs would advocate for empty parking lots and vacant office cubicles. Today, that has changed. Currently, more than 50% of the workforce is mobile on any given day, and IDC predicts that number to reach 73% by 2011.

While employee mobility offers tremendous potential for cost savings, improved organizational agility and better customer relationships, organizations must rely on technology to strategically enable an anytime, anywhere workforce–or risk throwing the cost savings and improved efficiency benefits out the window.

Our company specializes in helping corporations manage their mobile workforces, and we’ve found there are countless technologies that promise to make life easier for road warriors, telecommuters and relocating workers. Here are the tested technologies that really matter:

GPS devices
GPS technology can be a great way for employees to plan their routes and get familiar with new geographic areas more quickly. It can also help companies locate where their mobile employees are at any given time, which can add a level of safety. For companies with service employees in the field, a GPS program helps provide better customer service, as employees can adapt to appointment time changes quickly and give customers a more accurate idea of when their technician will arrive. Finally, GPS systems are important for a mobile workforce because they make a tedious task –- reporting on expense submissions – easier, and provide more accurate data for business reimbursements. More

I'd heard about this new iPhone app, but it wasn't until AT&T's (T) sales pitch landed in my inbox Thursday morning that its significance hit home.

It's called the AT&T Navigator — a turn-by-turn GPS navigation system for your car that runs on an iPhone 3G or 3GS.  From the press release and early reviews it sounds like it's packed with features, from voice activation and spoken directions to the ability to search for the nearest Wi-Fi hotspot and the cheapest gas.

The problem with the application is how you pay for it. Downloading the Navigator is free. Owning it is expensive: $10 added to your monthly bill — even if you delete the app — until you contact AT&T and shut off the service.

Over the life of a two year AT&T contract, this one application could set you back $240, more than you paid for the iPhone itself.

Welcome to the world of subscription pricing, one of the more than 1,000 new application programming interfaces (APIs) added to the iPhone's software development kit (SDK) last March.

More

There’s a theory favored by savvy Apple watchers that the first generation iPhone — greeted with such hoopla last year — was not actually the real thing.

That iPhone – the one that hundreds of thousands of Americans queued up to buy for up to $599 apiece, the one that Time magazine named the Invention of the Year, the one that six million people purchased before Apple finally stopped making them in May – was just a trial balloon floated by Steve Jobs to test the airwaves.

According to this theory, the real iPhone – the one aimed at the broadest possible market here and abroad — would start at $199, the magic price point at which consumer electronics devices seem to take off and become mass market phenomena. It would have built-in GPS location tracking, "push" e-mail, and wireless syncing with corporate enterprise networks. Most important, it would run hundreds of third-party applications available through an online App Store and operate over so-called third generation (3G) cellular networks that are two to five times faster than the one used by that first, prototype iPhone.

If this theory is true, then the real iPhone era begins on Friday, July 11, at 8:00 a.m.

That's when the iPhone 3G goes on sale at Apple (AAPL) and AT&T (T) outlets in the United States and at the stores of Apple's cellular partners in some 20 other countries around the world. (Strictly speaking, the era begins early Thursday, when the device goes on sale at 12:01 a.m. New Zealand time. Given how the Earth turns, that corresponds to 8:00 a.m. July 10 at Apple's New York City flagship store and 5:01 a.m. at its Cupertino headquarters.)

Some things about the new iPhone haven't changed. Physically, it's almost identical to the first. Same touch screen, same dimensions — except for the back, which is slightly bulgier and made of black plastic instead of metal.

Conceptually, it's still one device that combines three of today's most popular technologies — cellular communications, portable digital music and wireless access to e-mail and the World Wide Web.

And the fundamental breakthrough is the same: unlike most devices that combine several functions and do none of them well, the iPhone puts together three must-have functions and does at least two of them better than they have ever been done before.

Early reviews suggest that the one thing the first iPhone was not particularly good at — telephony — is much improved in the second version, thanks to a redesigned audio system and, perhaps, improvements in AT&T's network.

There's still no physical keyboard, so devotees of RIM's (RIMM) BlackBerry who were turned off by the lack of tactile feedback when dialing or texting on the first iPhone are not likely to be turned on by the second. The battery is still not user-replaceable, a shortcoming that may be even more important this time given the power demands of operating at 3G speeds. (One early reviewer who was getting nine hours of Internet use on the first iPhone clocked less than six hours on the second. See here.)

The built-in camera is the same under-2 megapixel device that can't do video. There's still no way to cut and paste text. And you are still married to AT&T's cellular network for the life of a two-year contract, at least in the United States. In fact, the bonds of that matrimony may be even stronger this time around, given the way AT&T has set up the in-store activation procedure, and will cost U.S. customers at least $10 a month more.

There are many small improvements. You can search address books, delete e-mails en masse, set parental controls and save e-mailed photos. (These improvements will also be available to owners of the original iPhone as part of a free software upgrade.)

Investors will note that Apple has made major changes in its business model. Rather than testing the waters with a handful of exclusive contracts — first with AT&T, then with O2 (TEF) in England, T-Mobile (DT) in Germany and Orange (FTE) in France — Apple has gone global this time, with deals in six of the seven continents and more than 70 countries. To do this, however, it has had to largely abandon the arrangement — unique among cell phone manufacturers — by which carriers sold the iPhone for full price and kicked back a share of their monthly revenue to Apple, which was accounted for in monthly increments over the life of a cell phone contract (usually 24 months).

Steve Jobs was able to dictate these terms — quite advantageous to Apple — because the carriers recognized that being first to sell the iPhone would win them thousands of new customers. In most of the new markets Apple is entering this year, it is acting more like a conventional cellphone manufacturer, taking its (sizeable) profits upfront and letting the carriers subsidize the device with voice and data plans as costly as local market conditions will allow. (See Canada's Rogers Communications (RCI), here for example, to see what kinds of problems this can lead to.) The price of the iPhone itself also varies widely, from as much as $888 for pre-paid phones in Italy to $75 in Mexico and free with certain data plans in the U.K.

Except for those costs, none of this affects the experience of the users.

For them, what will really distinguish this iPhone from the one that preceded it — and from every other smartphone out there — is the flood of software expected to be unleashed when the App Store opens on Friday. Apple has already demonstrated more than a dozen third-party programs for the iPhone, and over the next few months you can expect to hear about hundreds more: business apps that take advantage of the iPhones ability to "push" data down the network when it's available (rather than when it's requested); games that use the device's accelerometer to navigate virtual space; shopping and social networking programs that use satellite tracking to tell you what shops or restaurants and which of your friends (or enemies) are near the spot where you are, right now.

In the end, every successful computing device is ultimately a software "platform," a vehicle for the programs that give it its true value. This is where the real iPhone will stand out, and judging from the interest among the 4,000 third-party developers who have already signed up to write for it, it's got a good headstart.

Last Thursday, a week and a half before the expected unveiling of iPhone version 2.0, Apple (AAPL) published a 371-page patent that describes virtually every aspect of version 1.0 — and adds a few wrinkles we haven't seen before. You can download it here.

Alden Malley at AppleInsider has done a pretty good job of teasing out the details in the patent that aren't offered in the current iPhone, items that could be taken as a checklist for improvements to look for in the 3G model. Among them:

• Instant messaging
• Inline content in Safari, such as Flash and Quicktime movies
• A dedicated blogging client
• Java software downloads
• MMS picture and video messaging
• Support for voice-activated commands and audio capture.
• An "optical sensor" on the top center of the device (possibly for videoconferencing)
• A GPS module for mapping and geo-tagging

The patent application, No. 20080122796, was originally submitted on September 5th, the same day Apple announced the iPod touch.

Although, as Malley notes, Apple is under no obligation to deliver any of the improvements described here, the document does offer hints — both broad and specific — about the direction the company is headed.

It also offers a rare glimpse inside Apple's iPhone skunkworks and at the people who work there. Although Steve Jobs is listed first, the filing also lists two dozen Apple employees whose names you rarely hear outside the Cupertino campus. To give credit where credit is due, here they are:

Jobs; Steven P.; (Palo Alto, CA) ; Forstall; Scott; (Mountain View, CA) ; Christie; Greg; (San Jose, CA) ; Lemay; Stephen O.; (San Francisco, CA) ; Herz; Scott; (Santa Clara, CA) ; Van Os; Marcel; (San Francisco, CA) ; Ording; Bas; (San Francisco, CA) ; Novick; Gregory; (Santa Clara, CA) ; Westerman; Wayne C.; (San Francisco, CA) ; Chaudhri; Imran; (San Francisco, CA) ; Coffman; Patrick Lee; (Menlo Park, CA) ; Kocienda; Kenneth; (Sunnyvale, CA) ; Ganatra; Nitin K.; (San Jose, CA) ; Anzures; Freddy Allen; (San Francisco, CA) ; Wyld; Jeremy A.; (San Jose, CA) ; Bush; Jeffrey; (San Jose, CA) ; Matas; Michael; (San Francisco, CA) ; Marcos; Paul D.; (Los Altos, CA) ; Pisula; Charles J.; (San Jose, CA) ; King; Virgil Scott; (Mountain View, CA) ; Blumenberg; Chris; (San Francisco, CA) ; Tolmasky; Francisco Ryan; (Cupertino, CA) ; Williamson; Richard; (Los Gatos, CA) ; Boule; Andre M.J.; (Sunnyvale, CA) ; Lamiraux; Henri C.; (San Carlos, CA).

Notable absence: Apple VP Tony Fadell, who built the iPod and heads the division that created the iPhone. His name had appeared with Jobs' on earlier iPhone patents.