INBOX: THERE ARE a lot of fantastic predictions being made for satellite navigation being embedded in mobile phones. The most useful application so far has been in our cars - yet we rarely extract all the possible benefits from this amazing technology, writes Mike Butcher.

My e-mail inbox is crammed almost daily with yet another Facebook-clone social network. Many are now starting to call themselves mobile social networks, where not only can you see what your friends are doing, but where they are doing it.

It might be useful for the digital voyeur, but what would be more immediately useful would be an ad-hoc "social network" for cars - and it's not as crazy as it sounds.

Researchers at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm have been working for some years on a feature known as "flocking". This technology uses radio transmitters to bring lots of travelling cars into a sort of computer-controlled convoy.

The advantages are simple. If all cars on the road could be controlled automatically, based on traffic flows, weather or their density, the entire transport system would be many times more efficient. There's just one snag. We'd probably have to let a computer drive the car, something most people are not that keen on as yet.

A less extreme version of the above would have us sharing information with the cars around us, such as what service stations are good further up the road. However, until this information nirvana arrives, we'll have to make do with the next best thing,which is currently a SatNav with more "social" features.

TomTom remains one of the biggest SatNav makers and it's about to launch a new system which makes use of information that users of its products have been generating over the years.

The IQ Routes technology will appear in April on the new TomTom GO 930T model, the update to the GO 920T. Inside this normal-looking SatNav is data based on real average speeds that have been measured on actual roads, not just what a computer thinks a road speed is.

After inputting your destination, the 930T selects the route that takes the least time based on all this data. It turns out that almost half the journeys are faster, saving money and fuel as a result.

For the last few years TomTom has been allowing its users to upload road information via a mobile phone or PC connected to the SatNav. Now, the anonymous data about road speeds of more than 10 billion kilometres of driven roads has been added to TomTom's latest models.

As a guide, you can currently pick up the GO 920T for about €525 online.