At their recent developer summit Nokia described how it would be opening up the Ovi platform to third party developers. Apps on Maps was given as the initial example and now, at the Where 2.0 conference, Nokia has announced more of the technical details. The Ovi Maps Player API will allow developers to embed Ovi Maps on third party website and create 'mash-ups' by overlaying data and interacting with the map. As such it will be in direct competition with the Google Maps and its accompanying APIs. Read on for more details.
Read on in the full article.
Nice. I can see potential here. Let's say you need directions to get to the pub you've never been in. You check out the page of that pub, see there are ovi maps directions, connect your phone, sync and voila, gps will guide you.
Pretty neat stuff.
Not really getting the extension to the computer side of things. I'd rather they just keep integrating Maps on the phone side of things. So as opposed to looking at the site for the pub on your PC and mapping directions there, I would rather be able to look at the pub's site on my 97, highlight the address on the web page which would then directly open Maps and start navigating... all on my phone. Right now the reason I don't really use Maps is that compared to Google Maps it's a pain to simply enter addresses. That's another thing they need to fix.
Not keen on the name, but the thing itself sounds good.
Good article! I would like to know more about this 'mapping' technology.. I think this technology will play a major role in differentiating mobile phones in future.
Malkmus wrote:Not really getting the extension to the computer side of things. I'd rather they just keep integrating Maps on the phone side of things. So as opposed to looking at the site for the pub on your PC and mapping directions there, I would rather be able to look at the pub's site on my 97, highlight the address on the web page which would then directly open Maps and start navigating... all on my phone.
Seconded. For the App on Maps technology to be better usable and to be monetisable by third party developers it has to be on the device.
I think you can guarantee that is on the way. It the main story I said this was only the web side. I am sure we'll learn about the mobile side in due course.
The map canvas / sharing etc is cross platform so its seems reasonable you'll be able to build apps on Maps through Javascript etc on mobile too. I imagine this could take the form of an add-on or part of WRT. Indeed I imagine it would work with WRT even now...
" Let's say you need directions to get to the pub you've never been in. You check out the page of that pub, see there are ovi maps directions, connect your phone, sync and voila, gps will guide you."
Alternatively, just open Google Maps and search for the pub's name.
I quite like Nokia Maps, but 9 times out of 10 Google is better. The only time I really use Nokia is when I'm abroad and have already downloaded the map, so I don't have to use the internet.