Excellent viral vid from Nokia — you can, of course, get Ovi Maps 3.0 at nokia.com/maps.

(via Ben/ReallyMobile)

Thankfully Wikipedia explains that Easter is officially based around Sunday April 4th.

At Easter, of course, quite a few people start traveling. If you’re planning a trip, may I prompt you to give Nokia’s Ovi Maps the time of day and check it out? I’m pretty sure they’ve got you covered. The all new version recently released offers:

- Free turn-by-turn voice guided walk and drive navigation available for 74 countries in 46 languages, as well as detailed maps for over 180 countries
F- ree premium content, including access to Lonely Planet and Michelin travel guides for over 1,000 world-wide destinations with listings for sights, restaurants, hotels, shops, nightlife and more
- Integrated recommendations, so whether you are looking for the best coffee shop, a top museum or a hidden gem only the locals know about, the guides will make sure you find your way.
- No need to know the street names – just search for ‘coffee’ and the top venues near you pop up.
- Maps can also be pre-loaded, saving time and money on data charges, so once maps are on your phone you can find what you want when you want it

Put that in your TomTom and smoke it.

Give it a go on any long journeys you’ve got planned and let me know how you get on?

If you’d like to hire the team that built and created Garmin Connect, the world’s largest repository of recorded GPS activities, then today is your lucky day.

Garmin decided to shut down operations at its San Francisco office just over a month ago — and thus move all Garmin Connect management and development back to Nowheresville, Some State. (Olathe, Kansas, if you wanted to know). Most of the Garmin Connect team aren’t bothering with the relocation.

So they’ve knocked up a site to showcase their talents, talk about Garmin Connect and how they built it.

If you’re in the market for a location-based team of geniuses, you can hire them as one team, ready to rock. Given how hot location is at the moment, I doubt the team will be waiting long.

Every success, team!

The site you need: http://thegcteam.com/

Christof Hellmis is a highly affable and passionate chap. I believe Rafe had met him quite a few times before, but our interview at Mobile World Congress was my first opportunity to say hello. When I say Christof is passionate, he perhaps doesn’t necessarily display it in the traditional sense (e.g. arms waving, spluttering with delight). Instead he’s calm, confident, direct — you’ll see in Part 1, the first question we asked was ‘Tell us about the Ovi Maps 3.0 launch’ (where Nokia announced free maps and navigation).

Christof’s immediate response?

“For us, January 21st was a lifetime milestone…”

Right then. My kind of guy! So if you’re into mobile maps and navigation and the possibilities surrounding the technology, these two videos will be of supreme interest.

Here’s Part 1:

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And then, Part 2:

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So how did Annsi handle that question?

He got stuck right in. He wasn’t sitting back and trying to remember the talking points, no. I witnessed a chap who sincerely believes (and, has most probably seen) in his vision for the future. It makes really, really interesting viewing — especially his assertion that the generic mobile interface for consuming ‘media’ will be a map.

I really was impressed that this ‘grey-haired’ executive could talk-the-talk. I really hope that he continues to galvanise the team at Nokia (and, to a lesser extent, the Symbian and MeeGo teams) to deliver the vision he described in this video.

I don’t think Anssi was being creative when, in Part 1, he commented that (in relation to the N97 failures) his ‘sleepless nights are now in the past’. For someone as enthusiastic and as excited about the possibilities of mobile technology, it must have been a galling experience watching the utter derision with which consumers and the media greeted the arrival of the bug-laden disappointing Nokia N97.

What the hell were Nokia doing delivering the N97 into the marketplace as a high-end top-of-the-range device when it was going to get immediate comparisons to other bleeding-edge devices (and be found wanting, by everyone but the die-hard Nokia fans).

Of course the N97 and the N97 mini were a total success. Commercially. Annsi was careful to point this out. They shipped millions of them to their customers. But remember, the customers, of course, were the mobile operators, who, frankly, couldn’t-give-a-damn. They’d already committed to adding the ‘next’ Nokia device into their range whether it was good, bad or entirely rubbish. The end-consumers, however, well… I’m reasonably sure a lot of them fully intend not making the same mistake every again.

I think Annsi is right, however, when he makes the point that consumers really do trust Nokia. Or at least, they want to do so. They will, as Annsi maintains, “give us a second chance.” But just once. I think Nokia really must work hard to make sure that the high-end devices they ship into the marketplace this year are fantastic.

Anyway, to the video. If you’re even half interested in Nokia, if you follow the mobile industry, I strongly recommend sitting and watching Part 3 of the interview.

I’m willing to bet that even the most ardent iPhone and BlackBerry fans reading are closet Nokia fans too…

For convenience I’ve put all the parts together here:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

This morning I thought it was time to get stuck into mobile oblivion once again and check out Vodafone 360.

As I walked down to the tube I recognised the now familiar ‘oh shit’ feeling that greets all users of the Samsung H1 Vodafone 360 device: That is, the knowledge that someone might recognise you using the device. There is, unfortunately, nothing else bar a first edition Motorola Razr, that can make you look as unfashionable.

Don’t get me wrong, the device itself has a lovely bright screen and looks fairly attractive. It’s the fact that someone might recognise that I’ve handed over my existence to an organisation that thinks it knows best.

Witness, for example, the little square friends status layout that will permit you 18 characters of status update. I really like messing round with the squares — but when I was trying to see what Neil Wooding was up to, I couldn’t read his whole message. By default, the first screen only let me read:

Struggling to deal…

That got my attention. I clicked.

The little square that popped up revealed:

Struggling to deal with content reviews and…

There’s more. But I couldn’t read it. Indeed 360 appears to offer no more functionality in this regard. 7 words. That’s all you get. Choose your word length wisely.

Somewhere I can feel a Vodafone committee declaring, ‘But 7 words is the optimum status update length! We have reports from consultants that specifically state this is the case’

Fat lot of use to me. If I want to read Neil’s entire status update, I need to flick through the couple of hundred squares to find his profile. I know. I tried. I did find him. But he’d changed his status by then. Or. Well, to be frank, I don’t quite know whether I was looking at an up to date status… Anyway. Rubbish.

Apologies to those having their breakfast on The Avenue in Chiswick this morning. The person you could hear effing and blinding and slamming what looked like a silver handset into that wall on the corner — that was me. Sorry.

I changed my status about four times this morning. Despite having the mobile version of a degree in nuclear physics, I usually have to do what every other (disappointed) customer does frequently when using 360: Guess. Some parts of the user interface are often so confusing you literally need to tap and see what happens. Then watch your frustration rise as the device does exactly the opposite of what you intend. I was trying to switch to numbers on the keypad but the user interface kept wanting to publish my incomplete status. Perhaps they’ve added a 7-word limit function I didn’t know about.

What’s severely pissing me off this morning, however, is the Vodafone map function. I set my expectations to ‘fairly bollocks’ and fired up the application. It is dire. The maps would have been really, really good two years ago. It just doesn’t compare to Google Maps. You can actually see the user interface building the map layers. First the river. Now one or two yellow roads. Now some lighter yellow roads. Now a few more bits of green… I’m *waiting*.

Why didn’t they just buy it from Google? Why bother re-inventing something that — whatever you claim — doesn’t quite meet anyone’s expectations?

Committees.

The worst function of the maps app is that other 360 users can shit all over it. I’m scrolling over the West London version and finding little square white icons all over the place. Icons added by (what appears to be) Vodafone staffers. The icons just appear willy nilly. I clicked on one.

‘Bobby Rao’s place #2′

I shit ye not. That’s what it says. What the fluck is that doing there? How does that improve my existence? Why am I being exposed to this rubbish? I click on it and that’s all I get. I’m pleased to see that Bobby can’t quite be bothered to use the mapping function properly on his 360 device either.

Committees.

Somebody somewhere has been to too many ‘The Future of Mobile Mapping’ seminars and got the wrong end of the ‘user empowerment’ stick. By all means allow users to add notes to and augment their maps. But don’t expose me to them. Unless they are my friends. And give me the function to layer that augmentation on top.

Flucking committees.

I nearly laughed out loud as I notice a flippin’ large pin with the title ‘VDF Office’. Yes. That’s precisely where we can all go and complain.

The concept is sound. Being able to add little square pins to my map for my friends to find/follow, yeah, I like that. But what committee decided to open it up to everyone? What mapping genius consultants suggested this feature? Anyone can add anything?

It doesn’t scale. It scales really badly. If someone’s added more than one pin, you see a square in the location with a number corresponding — I imagine — to the number of entries for the location. You can scroll through them but it gets unmanageable after about 10.

For the avoidance of doubt, I don’t want to read the pin data for the Great Unwashed. Or at least give me the facility to switch that on and off.

Posted via email from MIR Live

Update: I’ve since managed to find the screen that shows you an entire status message. And apparently, I’m told you can switch off the individual pin things on the map. Somewhere. I’m not quite sure where though.

Ben Smith and Rafe Blandford DISAGREE on Nokia Maps from Mobile Industry Review on Vimeo.

Here’s the proof.

Posted by email from MIR Live (posterous)

This addition comes right after the location team released new optimizations that enhanced the abilities of Google Maps to calculate your location even more accurately. 

My Location with Wi-Fi works pretty much similar to how your location is calculated based on Cell tower information. In this, information transmitted by Wi-Fi access points is used to calculate your location. Theoretically, since the range of the routers are very small compared to that of a cell tower, the location info calculated is more accurate.

However, they go onto mention that even though WiFi based location is available in many of the major cities in the world, the coverage and accuracy may vary. 

Is this what Ewan needed?

Do you see this as a feature that’ll change how you use Google Maps?

In Portugal this weekend, I flicked out my E90 (running an older version, alas) and watched my taxi journey from airport to hotel. There’s something rather reassuring to see your little blue dot heading along unfamiliar streets and highways on the way to your destination.

I caught Google’s latest Maps update from the main Google Blog (although there’s more detail on the Google Mobile blog).

Streetview was, for quite a while, only relevant if you lived in America. In San Francisco this year, I thoroughly enjoyed — and hugely valued — the ability to view actual streets and doors from Google Maps.

Now you can get it on your mobile.

Genius.

The Google Team have made a swish little video demonstrating how it works. Have a watch of this to appreciate just how near-Nirvana the experience is:

So, you’re searching for something, you want decent and quick results, you’re wanting geographic-centric results, you want a bit of reassurance/familiarity with Streetview. Excellent.

This is exactly what I’ve been wanting for a while. Google Maps Mobile is one of my ‘required’ mobile apps on whatever handset I’m using. Streetview upgrades it.

Now I’d like to see the entire world Streetviewed. Particularly the UK.

You can see an example of Streetview in action in San Francisco (on your desktop) with this link. It’s the Moscone West Center, where CTIA September 2008 was held.

It turns out, there exists an app that can take Google Earth’s place until Google rolls up their sleeves. Presenting, Earthscape. Earthscape is an application available for the iPhone that gives you a globe to play around with, much like Google Earth. You can browse using your fingers and zoom using two fingers. The application also has the ability to point to your location on the globe using the iPhone’s location feature. The globe can be viewed in Satellite view, or you can tilt the map to view it ground level. 

The application uses its own set of imagery and hence, is nowhere as advanced as Google’s. If you’re in a city that’s not known for something, expect some non-detailed images. It features the ability to highlight locations with Wikipedia entries and users can add their own photos to the database.

For a limited time, the developers have made the application completely free through iTunes, bringing it down from the usual price of $10. So grab it while you can. It doesn’t get better than this.

[Via TechCrunch]

Most of our readers will be familiar with Street View, Google’s Magic technology that sends out little dwarfs out to the corner on a map with handheld cameras so you can view the place in 360 degs as if you were standing right there. Okay, I might have over exaggerated a little, but you get the idea. Street is presently only available in a few places, but it’s an useful addition nonetheless.

If Street View doesn’t excite you, the new version also adds Walking Directions to your phone. Though in beta, the feature gives you foot walking directions. Also, there are minor tweaks along with faster search results.

Both these features are already available on the Desktop version of Google Maps, but this is the firms time they’re being rolled out onto Mobile Phones.

If your phone is compatible, head over to http://m.google.com/maps and start playing. I tried the new version on my E90 and I’m quite impressed.

He was trying to find his local Wal-Mart with Nokia Maps.

Predictably, it didn’t quite work.

Google Maps found it perfectly.

Gahhh.

Is that a failure of Nokia Maps? Or is it Phoneboy’s failure for not providing Nokia Maps with the exact location details?

Users will get all the usual recommendations on hotels, restaurants and bars as well as tips on tourist attractions and nightclubs.

Hopefully there’s some thought been put into the integration between the two – combining turn-by-turn street navigation with Lonely Planet’s guided walks, for example, would be a rather handy match.

The FT says the Met Office has opened a new studio in Millbank which will be used to “stream video to 3G mobile phones of three-dimensional “fly-through” weather maps akin to those provided for BBC and ITN television bulletins”. It already provides 2D maps through MobiTV.

3D fly through maps? It’s what HSDPA was made for. On a side note, the Met Office is also buying some new computer modeling technology so it can put up severe weather warnings quicker by predicting when flooding is on the way – sounds like something that could really benefit from an SMS alert system to me.

At the moment, the information is only for some 40 cities in North America but I really hope we’re going to see it coming to the London transport network some time in the very near future. And here’s why: the updated Google Mobile Maps has a feature which can tell you when the last bus or train of the day goes.

So, imagine you’re at an unfamiliar pub somewhere and you really fancy staying for just one more but you don’t know if you’ll miss the last bus home if you do. All you’ve got to do is open up Google Maps and voila: you’ll know in a couple of clicks if you can squeeze in a cheeky half and make the last bus or not.

The version with US transit info is available here.

The ten Signature handsets will give users access to the Orange Music Store, both Orange and NGage games, as well as Nokia Maps, through Orange’s traditional user interface. It looks like the companies are betting big on maps in particular: the pair say: the Nokia “Mobile Maps platform and GPS technology will be introduced to a wide portfolio of Nokia handsets in the Orange Signature range” with a view to signing up 10 million users before 2010.

It’s looking pretty good for Nokia’s Ovi right now: getting 10 million maps users from Orange alone is not to be sniffed at (although for a company with one third of the world’s phones, you’d hope they’ve got some bigger targets in mind). But there’s another reason for Nokia to be pleased with itself: Orange’s Signature devices have always been, by and large, Windows Mobile handsets.

Despite RIM’s plans to pitch the device to “business professionals and power users”, the Bold looks like it’s another play by the folk at RIM to charm the consumer audience. As well as boasting similar whizzbang features to those that made the Nokia N95 a crowd pleaser, it’s also got some good looking styling and iTunes syncing, via BlackBerry Media Sync.

Want to get your hands on one? It’ll be out this summer, according to RIM. No word on who’s the lucky UK operators yet.