Forum Nokia Kevin Sharp has produced a nice summary of Nokia's plans for Ovi Maps in terms of in-building navigation (think malls, airports, etc.), collating material from several recent events, much of it from Michael Halbherr, VP of Social Location. It's a good read, although the paragraph about Nokia collecting 'cell learning' data from our phones gave my privacy nerve a little prod. Comments welcome if you can expand on what Nokia is (or isn't) doing here!
Read on in the full article.
"Nokia collecting 'cell learning' data from our phones gave my privacy nerve a little prod"
Hasn't Google maps been doing this since its inception?
I think Nokia should get the already existing features of Maps Working for everybody, without discrimination. When I say discrimination I mean that a person in Italy or France pays the same ammount of money for buying navigation but gets 2000 times more detailed maps compared to people in Bulgaria, Romania and other eastern European contrys with maps smaller than 15-20MB (and there are a lot of them worldwide too).
It's good to see they're thinking of the future, but Nokia... hou about showing me the building first and then the inside of it? better yet... woulrd you at least show me the street ?
The amount of all this mapping, tracking and triangulation stuff going around from all the major vendors is getting insane. First it was everyone getting a GPS for their car (when they had a perfectly good Melways (map book)) then getting the same thing on their phone, then Google Street View, and now tracking and triangulation WITHIN buildings!
Soon your not going to be able to navigate from your front door to your car without your phone!
Now I'm definitely not one to limit innovation, but does everyone really need that much help to walk around a shopping centre?
Solutions to problems that don't exist.
In car sat nav is great. It reads out directions to you hands free, gives you time estimates and distance to go etc. For me a map can never compete with a proper sat nav device.
Phones are crap at in car nav. The damn things receive a call when you need to be looking for turns or you need to make a call. Good dedicated sat navs are so cheap that I would never put up with the inconvenience of a phone nav whilst driving. Phones are great on foot though.
I've never been lost inside a building. They are well enough signed, I don't see a need for this.
I like the in building navigation idea. unfamiliar large buildings are pretty confusing. hospitals are the classic place for getting lost really, the signs are always awful.
also, I hate shopping and never know where a specific shop is in a shopping centre. stopping to look at the map by the escalators is always a pain so in shop navigation sounds good.
I'm pretty confident of my sense of direction but I'm not psychic. mapping just gets me to things quicker and easier. marking the car in airport carparks is pretty useful, took a lot longer to find last time when I forgot to tag it.