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Another film sightingAnother film sightingPosted Feb 26, 2009 10:37 UTC (Thu) by eru (subscriber, #2753)In reply to: 6,202,008 by sjlyall Parent article: Microsoft sues TomTom That reminded me: Right near the begining the Wim Wenders film "Until the End of the World", we see the main character using an in-car computer that works much like a TomTom, except a bit smarter as it warns about a traffic jam ahead on its own. This sci-fi film was released in 1991, the events are supposed to happen in 1999-2000. From a gadget point of view this film is very interesting in other ways as well. The makers obviously tried very hard to predict what technology would realistically be common 10 years in the future, enlisting help from tech companies (Sony figures prominently in many gadgets). Some things they got tight, like very small video cameras and the afore-mentioned car navigator (although that was not yet very common in 1999), but curiously there are no mobile phones, the characters make calls from video-equipped phone booths instead. And no Internet.
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Another film sighting Posted Feb 26, 2009 14:20 UTC (Thu) by klaasjan (guest, #5492) [Link]
"an in-car computer that works much like a TomTom, except a bit smarter as it warns about a traffic jam ahead on its own."
The high-end TomTom units contain a GPRS modem and report their position to a central server which is able to detect traffic jams by lots of slowing navigation units ;). So in exchange for TT knowing where you are you get an early warning about traffic jams.
Also, I suppose that's the "mobile internet" feature the patent is about.
Another film sighting Posted Feb 27, 2009 6:58 UTC (Fri) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link] Interesting, I didn't know about this feature. I wonder where Wender's team got the idea for the smart navigator shown in the film? Probably ideas related to it appeared in publications already in the 1980's (the film took a long time to make), and could be useful prior art for TomTom.
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