Nokia is planning opening up Nokia Maps for the Desktop and synchronizing information between desktop and mobile phone. Therefore they are working on a browser frontend for their maps and navigation service Nokia Maps, which is optimized for the PC. The user should be able to plan a route on the PC and is shown the information on the mobile after synchronizing. I can be assumed that Nokia Maps will be embedded into the Ovi-platform. Currently the product is under development and will not be available before fall 2008.
In general it can be said that Nokia make a lot of effort providing geospatial solution for the mobile world. Nokia has announced to deliver 35 to 40 million mobiles, which have built-in GPS chips.
[via: golem.de]
Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.
Searching the own home place with Google Earth or Google Maps is definitively one of the most popular activities for many users. “Geoimage-Austria” has provided Google with new imagery for Burgenland, Upper Austria, Tyrol, Vorarlberg and Salzburg. All data is older than one year, but it should be possible to recognize an object with the size of an football.
Until 2009 a new, updated image is planned, which covers whole Austria.
Sample: Villach (this is older data, but also high resolution)
[via derStandard]
Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.
There are already some videos about Where 2.0 conference online. To view these go to: http://where.blip.tv
One very interesting talk is from Adrian Holovaty, who was talking about: “Everyblock: A Newsfeed for your Block”.
In the end of his presentation he encuraged the audience: “Roll your own maps”. With standard maps like Google Maps, Yahoo Maps you get a lot of stuff but maybe you don’t really need this for your own map application. Additional you have no contol over:
color
fonts
text size
behavior over zoom levels
road widths
languages
of your maps. If you publishing a website you maybe use templates but you want to have full control to design you own cooperative identity. Why do we accept ‘no control’ for our maps? Personalisation become increasingly importance - also for maps. Therefore I thik this will change.
Google has recently updated their StreetView data for Manhatten. Beside some improvements in image quality, Google has implemented automatic face-blurring technology. Form the screenshot you can see that it works really nice. It blurs the faces, but doesn’t detract too much from the imagery. Here is the quote form the official Australian Google Blog:
At Google, we take our users’ privacy very seriously. Street View only contains imagery that anyone can already see walking down a public street and we’ve always had in place image removal tools. In addition, today, on the Google LatLong blog, we have just announced the first public test of our new face-blurring technology on the busy streets of Manhattan. This effort has been a year in the making - and we will continue to work hard to improve it as we roll it out for our existing and future imagery. Here’s an example from the bustling streets of Manhattan:
In Australia (and New Zealand), Street View will also feature face-blurring, as well as image removal tools.
This new technology indicates that Google is working on technologies to fullfill the legal requirements to introduce StreetView in Europe as well. I think StreetView Europe is comming soon…
[via GWB, google-au.blogspot.com]
Written and submitted from Home, using my 802.11g WiFi network.
Today Google has integrated Streetview in Google Maps routing. If you generate a routing inside a city with Streetview you can see a camera. With a click on this camera a Streetview window is comming up where the street scene of the position is shown.
