Perspectives

Inspired by Pradeep B V’s comment on my earlier post, I went on to check if Nokia has any (updated) Maps for my Nokia Phone (N73). My phone does not have GPS like the Nokia Navigator, but nevertheless, Maps on mobile (with GPRS for Search) can still come in very handy. Also, my phone came pre packaged with a dumb local application (with maps), but it only used to show the outline of India. Now, I have seen that many times in my sixth class Geography and that level of map is not useful for any god damn thing, let alone Local Search.

So, I started from here , downloaded and installed the “Nokia Maps” application over to my phone and then downloaded and installed a windows only (Infact, you won’t even find the download link on firefox on windows. Visit the link on IE) application over to my PC. And then, after a few glitches, I downloaded the India data pack.

The map data is from Navteq. And we all already know Navteq does not have the best data set for India. For instance, the data pack for China was about 190 MB whereas the India one was 21MB. (India is about a third in size compared to China).

I was checking in and around Bangalore and they have all the major roads named and searchable. But more importantly, because you can download the data pack into your mobile, you don’t need a network connection to search or view the Map. That is cool, because GPRS (or EDGE, 2.5 G) is real slow for Maps. Also, there is no connectivity in places where you generally tend to get lost.

Now, the technology is also different when you compare this with Google Maps Mobile or Yahoo! Go. Nokia Maps is a vector map application. What that means is, the maps are rendered by an engine that understands shapes rather than showing images that have maps pre-rendered (aka raster maps ).

So, the application is smaller, renders what needs to be rendered and ignores layers and shapes when it needs to, It is probably a bit slower because of all the bits it needs to flip/flop before rendering the shape. I may be wrong here, that is just my guess.

I don’t have GPS on my phone. Earlier, I tried to buy a bluetooth GPS receiver that I can hook up with my phone. But the pieces that I tried never worked with my phone and I gave up. So, I couldn’t check if GPS worked well with the application and if the map is, infact, accurate.

Anyway, If you have a Nokia big smart phone, go download the maps. It will come in handy.

Telematics Research Group released a press release a little while ago and they say that the future of Portable Navigational devices look promising. Also, Mobile phone based GPS will become popular than traditional PNDs from makers such as TomTom or Garmin. So, if you are going to buy an in-car navigation system, you may want to hold on. Maps may just be available on your mobile phone.

More here

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We’ve joined forces with Twitter and Twittervision to give you instant updates on Super Tuesday. Throughout the day, you can watch Twitter texts from across the country. And send in your own updates!
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Twittervision has always been fun to watch. And to make your ordinary super tuesday fun (after you’ve voted, that is) , visit Google Maps + Twitter. I think this is basically twittervision with filters on words like “obama” and “poll” and “vote”.