Discount tech is getting more impressive all the time. Take the latest from ALK Technologies, Nextel Communications and Motorola. They've put directions, dispatch and then some into a Nextel wireless phone.

Last year Nextel introduced coast-to-coast walkie-talkie service; it has long offered dispatch software for use over its wireless network, including products from providers like @Road, Datatrac, Descartes, AirIQ, Gearworks, Cloudberry and Cheetah. Of course, GPS is also available on Nextel phones so dispatchers can know a driver’s location.
Now those same phones will also provide turn-by-turn, street-level, truck-sensitive directions from ALK Technologies.
ALK’s Co-Pilot system brought spoken directions to laptop and later handheld computers in 1997. The company introduced a truck-sensitive product, CoPilot Truck, in 2001. A little less than two years later, ALK introduced CoPilot Truck in a more convenient PDA or handheld version.
Now it’s in a cellphone. Mount that phone in a simple dashboard cradle and the driver can listen -- with his hands free -- and see at a glance a simple display of the next turn and how far away it is.
No, they haven’t stuffed all that data in a phone’s puny memory. Instead, trip directions are broadcast over the Motorola iDEN network used by Nextel. You pay for the necessary message units. But as far as the driver is concerned, the results are the same – detailed, street-level directions in real time.
ALK calls its service PC*Miler | Mobile. Non-Nextel versions, CoPilot and CoPilor Truck | Mobile are available for networks including Cingular, AT&T, Sprint & Verizon.
To be fair, it should be noted that you will only be able to run one application at a time on the Nextel phone, so you can't run dispatch software at the same time the driver is receiving directions, for example. After all, this is a wireless phone application with all the limitations that implies.
But clearly, those limitations grow less limiting all the time.
For more information, visit www.alk.com.