Garmin partners with GyPSii geo-social network, find where your friends are and how to get there

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Sat-nav expert Garmin has announced a long-term deal with the geo-location and social networking site GyPSii, which will give the hardware manufacturer access to a range of new services including friend finding, sharing of photos and videos, and mobile search.

GyPSii already runs on a wide range of mobile phone operating systems, including Symbian, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, and the iPhone, and in an increasingly competitive market it’s not surprising that Garmin would want to partner in order to give its sat-navs and mobile phones more social skills…

Nokia buys Plazes location-aware social network

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Nokia has bought the German web startup Plazes, a location-aware social network which lets users find out where their friends are and what they’re doing — a sort of “Twitter meets Google Maps” mashup.

It’s not yet known exactly how much Nokia paid for the service, or what they intend to do with it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it becomes a part of Nokia’s Ovi service, pushing the company further into mobile services as well as simply making handsets…