I spoke with some Microsoft staff at CES about MSN Direct. They’ve announced enhanced services including news headlines, stock quotes, local events and a "send to GPS" feature that can be accessed from maps.live.com.
That last one could come in quite handy. Though designed to help with trip planning at your PC, I can see calling my wife from the road and asking her to look something up and send it to my GPS (user-selected locations are sent via the MSN Direct radio network). The locations show up under the "Web Favorites" button displayed in the nuvi 780 in the image above. It may be a step shy of true two-way connectivity, but it’s probably a lot safer for a solo driver.
Other tidbits from my meeting:
- Microsoft is working on building a parallel HD radio network for delivery of MSN Direct services
- Future plans include expanding service areas and content, including info on flight delays
- Traffic services do not yet include historical average speed data
About Rich Owings
i am looking at purchasing a new gps tom tom or garmin.looking at the garmin,i like the msn feature some of these units have,but my concern is that in 2012,it will no longer work so now the NuLink feature comes out.my question is,will you be able to upgrade the msn services on those models that have this feature to the NuLink service or would it be better to just get the 1690 with the NuLink service already on it? I am also looking at the tomtom 730 but i read the reviews in where there are a lot of complaints about tomtom home set up & there firmware problems which concerns me in the fact that i don’t want to buy something that has problems right from the git go.I currently have the tomtom 330s but want to upgrade to a gps with more features,a more top of the line gps if you will.i would appreciate your input on this.thanks.mike
No, you can’t upgrade them to nuLink but you may be able to add a standard FM traffic receiver. But the price of that option may mean you’re better off looking at other alternatives.