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Navtech has a feedback site where you can alert them to incorrect streets, missing streets, etc.

Just click on your language; select your country and click "Submit"; then fill out the form and click "Submit" again.

There is a huge list of things they should be doing to save themselves a massive amount of work in the future. While they still have to GPS the critical areas right now, if they are too short-sighted they'll find themselves doing it for decades.

...and making money hand over fist all the while.

You aren't accounting for capitalism. Navtech makes its money selling maps, not ensuring that map data is available to everyone free of charge. Why should they go to all that trouble to train various government agencies to keep their respective data sets accurate and up-to-date? Some other company could come along, collect the (now, public domain) data, and sell its own update disc.

Even if there were no competition, I dispute that your solution would be easier. Where else in society is it easier to get the government to do something than to just do it yourself? The feedback system you mention, on the other hand, sounds like an excellent idea.

The truth is that, in the end, I'm always going to prefer the solution involving smaller government. Just my philosophical tendency.

http://update.navtech.com/english_df.asp?ctry=Unit ed+States is the link for the US.

They currently have an opening for Associate Field Analyst in Las Vegas, NV. Good luck finding anyone willing to visit each and every strip club and bar in town, write down their addresses, and get paid while you're doing it.

Apparently they have been looking for someone to do that since June.

I became curious about the possiblities of a dashboard computer a few weeks ago. Many people have done it themselves with mini-ITX and other low power, small form factor motherboards. A few companies sell car computers, but I have not been impressed. Currently, there are many separate systems on the market, such as DVD players for passengers and MP3 players for the stereo. Dashboard space is precious, though. Of course, there are the standard stereo and climate control dash components on the dash, too. Navigation is another clearly useful role. One system, although possibly using mostly independent parts for stability reasons, should allow all these features on the dash.

I read about Wayfinder at Howard Forums. It uses a Bluetooth GPS unit and a mobile phone running Symbian to provide navigation. Service currently is for western Europe. I do not think it includes information about current road conditions.

Navigation Technologies seems to be the system many automobile manufacturers are now selling in their cars. They release updates on CD or DVD, but they are annual. I have read users complain about outdated information.

Both of these approaches are incomplete. A better navigation system is obvious. It should have an onboard database, and it should communicate with a server farm. It would have some processing power and static information, probably distributed annually by DVD, so that it can remain useful even when there is no wireless signal. It also would connect through a cell network, possibly through a GSM/GPRS Bluetooth phone as in the Wayfinder approach, to query a server that has both updates of the slowly changing information, such as maps and phonebooks, and the quickly changing information, such as weather and traffic. It would interact via voice. Why I cannot buy such a system is beyond me.