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Cellphone navigation with "radar" and wireframe graphics

Japanese firms Index and Jicoux have developed a navigation system application that runs on 3G GPS phones with digital compasses (which, at the moment, means KDDI's au service in Japan). It includes the ability to show a "radar display" of the location of nearby friends, places of interest, or bus and train stations useful in getting to your destination. There's also a B2B aspect to the service in that, as with most web-based map systems, it would be possible to pay to have your business location displayed on the radar. Slightly worrying is that they're also talking about tracking users' movement patterns and using the information for marketing, which sounds a touch too Big Brother for comfort. We wonder how useful the data would be, however; given that it would presumably only be possible to collect it while the app was running, you'd end up with what? Data on places that are popular but need a navigation system to find?

That aside, we think the smartest feature of the service, if it works accurately, is that when you're within 50 metres of the destination, the display switches from a compass pointer to a 3D map of the surroundings that looks like an old first-person wireframe game (as per the image on the right). On a cellphone screen, that has to be a lot easier than squinting at a map. They're also experimenting with a 3D map that would show the whole route, as per the latest car navigation systems.

[Via K-Tai Watch (Japanese)]