Social networking hits GPS with Aura

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By Stuart Turton in Hannover

Posted on 2 Mar 2010 at 15:18

Sygic has released a sat nav application dubbed Aura that melds GPS with social networking tools, as the company looks to carve a niche in a competitive market.

Using an interface similar to Google Earth, Aura uses maps licensed from TomTom-owned Tele Atlas and allows you to zoom to street level, with landmarks rendered in 3D. Once there, it offers the usual array of sat nav features including turn-by-turn navigation, a lane assistant and information on speed cameras and limits.

However, Aura also offers a range of social-networking services, including a feature that broadcasts your current location to your Aura contacts list.

"It's there to help you bump into friends when you're out, but it doesn't have to show your exact position, you can set it to show whatever level you want, or just turn it off," said a stand spokesperson, who confirmed that the feature would not be switched on by default.

Alongside the geolocation feature, Aura also allows users to report things such as speed traps to the community. Anybody who wants to receive these reports can then see them plotted on their maps.

Other social networking features include geotagged Wikipedia articles, offering further information on local points of interest and the ability to post status updates that will be displayed on the map alongside your current location.

The stand spokesperson said the company was looking to partner with Facebook and Twitter to automatically display those updates in Aura.

The Aura app is available for iPhone, with Android, Symbian and Windows Phone 7 versions set to follow.