What is special about Geospatial?

70 counties in a few minutes:

Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.

Steve Jobs is currently talking about the new iPhone at WWDC 2008 in San Francisco. It will have 3G and built in GPS.

Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.

I’ve found this great video on Google Earth Blog. The application was developed with Apple’s iPhone SDK.

Is this the way we will interact with geospatial data in near future?

[via Google Earth Blog]

Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.

Will the second iPhone Generation come with an integrated GPS module? The are a lot of rumours about the second iPhone out in the internet for serveral months. Now Engadget writes that the new iPhone has GPS included. I think we will get the answer directly from Mr. Jobs during his keynode at WWDC 2008 in June.

The tend in the mobile phone industry shows the increasing importance of locational services.

[via Engadget]

Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.

Google Maps are one of the most useful applications for mobile devices. Google Maps is relatively fast and easy to use. Apple has preinstalled an Google Maps application on their iPhone. For all people, who do not have a flat-rate contract with their provider and want to have full benefit of Google Maps, there is an nice little Tool called “Maps Offline” where you can download parts of Google Maps data for your iPhone.

The tool can be installed on the iPhone easily (only the Jiggy Framework is needed. Once installed, the users can download maps about various areas. The size of these areas only depending on the iPhone memory itself. In some cases this could be very useful, considering that the city area of Berlin requires 100 MB for the satellite photograph and 40 MB for the map.

Personally, I cannot varify this information because I’m not an owner of an iPhone. Maybe someone can give feedback on this.

» Maps Offline downloaden

[via GWB]

Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.

Apple introduced the Software Development Kit for their iPhone. Programmers can now produce third-party software for the Apple-Smartphone.

Apple has opened their iPhone for software applications of third party companies. Up to now all applications where closed and controlled by Apple. Apple CEO Steve Jops introduced Thursday the Software Developer Kit (SDK) for the iPhone. Additionally Apple wants to make the iPhone more applicable for business users. They are now in direct competition with the canadian Smartphone manifacturer Research in Motion (RIM).

With this SDK also LBS and mapping appication can be developed for the iPhone. I’m curious to see some of these appications for the iPhone. The official homepage of the SDK is currently (10.00 pm GMT+1) offline, but as soon as I can get some information I will blog about features that can enable LBS or mapping applications. Maybe there is something like in the Android SDK which manage location. The Location Manager is part of the Application Framework.

I think they are in direct competition with RIM but I’m not sure if they are also in competition with Google’s Android platform. On one side they use Google Services like Google Search or Google Maps on the other side both sites want to sell mobiles with their own platform. The future in the mobile sector is very interesting these days. All big companies want to be recognized on this market. If you think about the fact that more than 3 billons mobile phones are out there worldwide this is a big market for all business fields - there are also great challenges in the GIS and mobile mapping sector.

More and more people will get in touch with the internet the first time using a mobile device!

[apple.com]

Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.

Microsoft’s crazy design for a new mobile phone, one that is sure to knock Apple’s iPhone out of the water. You know its a joke, right?

Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.