Jaunted

The Droid's turn-by-turn GPS navigation system is voice activated, made to be docked on a windshield, and provides turn by turn directions. Without getting two deep into way that the GPS market is structured - two major companies, byzantine licensing restrictions, etc - at least one industry watcher thinks that the Android's GPS technology represents a "a disruptive play of a magnitude heretofore unseen." It's not yet as slick as TomTom, Garmin, or Magellan - though it's already better than the iPhone equivalent - but it has cutting-edge real time Internet connectivity that no one else has.

Getting even more techy now, the Android's Augmented Reality abilities are also cutting-edge. We've talked to you a little bit about AR in the context of Amsterdam travel guides and London Tube stops, and you should expect to hear a lot more in the coming months and years. It's arguably the single most significant tech/travel trend on the horizon.

Since the Droid uses the Android OS, users can avail themselves of whatever software has been created for other Android phones. One of the more interesting is Layar, which isn't so much an AR application - in fact, it's not an technically application - as much as it is a platform for designing pliable Augmented Reality applications. It's been around for Android much longer than it's been around for the iPhone, and so Droid users will be that far ahead with AR stuff. Very, very neat.

[Photo: Verizon]

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