Monthly Archive for January, 2009

Adventures in Nokia Maps pt. 1

WOM World approached me and asked if I would be interested to test Nokia Maps 3.0 on a Nokia 6210 Navigator. I agreed and they sent me a test device last week. This is the first post out of a short series, I hope.

Unlike others, I received a two-pin plug in a two-pin plug country and am actually able to recharge the device. All manuals are written in some nordic language, Swedish I guess, but since I own a Nokia E71 myself with basically identical menus, I didn’t really need manuals. The other problem was that all Nokia Maps licenses were limited to Scandinavian countries too, which doesn’t help a lot when you want to test the application in Central Europe. A quick email fixed the problem. Good.

The device itself has a Navigator button which loads the map application immediately. Positioning works very fast, it instantly had me located on the map and the cartography looks very good at a first glance.

One annoying thing is that the back cover, where battery and SIM are hiding, opens really hard. “Aufquan” would be the best Austrian term to describe the process of simultaneously pushing and pulling the button with a pen or knife, which supposedly should release the back cover. I’m using my own SIM from my cell phone and need to change it frequently in order to try the 6210 Navigator. So that’s a small problem I have with the device.

Full disclosure:

  • I’m not getting paid by Nokia or WOM World.
  • I have to return the test device after the two weeks test period.
  • WOM World covers my carrier expenses during the test period.
  • I’m not obliged to post anything.

Why I’m doing it?

Because I like maps, gadgets and was curious about Nokia Maps 3.0. I guess I’m not hard to convince when asked to play around with some tech toy for two weeks.

What does WOM World / Nokia get out of this?

Some backlinks, little buzz and maybe some useful feedback.

Street View, made in Romania

Norc, a Romanian company, is providing “street-level imaging” a.k.a. Street View for selected Central and Eastern European countries:

According to their website, the current coverage includes:

  • Romania – Bucharest, Ploiesti and Prahova Valley, Constanta and the Seaside, Brasov and Poiana Brasov, Cluj-Napoca, Timisoara, Iasi, Sibiu, Pitesti, Targoviste
  • Austria – Vienna
  • The Czech Republic – Prague, Brno
  • Slovakia – Bratislava, Trnava, Kosice, Banska-Bystrica, Zilina, Nitra
  • Poland – Warsaw, Krakow, Poznan, Wroclaw
  • Russia – Moscow

The interface is compared to Google’s Street View still a little rough around the edges, but otherwise, Norc did a fantastic job!

However, it would be interesting to know if Norc has developed its own business model based on their Street View services, and how it would work, or if they are just preparing to become the next Google snack.

[via Helge.at]

OpenStreetMap Vienna: completed.

That’s pretty exciting: just came back to Vienna, spent the morning poking around in OSM and the OSM wiki to figure out who the mappers are and if there are any community activities planned and ended up reading a press release saying that Vienna is completed in OpenStreetMap.

Awesome! Big kudos to the local mapping community! The quality of the map is impressing!

As for the rest of Austria, there is a huge data import going on since Fall ’08. More information on the process you’ll find at the wiki page. People all over Austria with good local knowledge are needed to support the import process, help identify errors and improve OpenStreetMap in rural areas.

If you want to make your town visible in OpenStreetMap, sign up and start mapping. It’s very easy and can be done using nothing more than an internet browser. Even better: spread the word, host a Stammtisch, tell your neighbors about OpenStreetMap and create your own map of your village.

For interested people in and around Vienna, the next Wiener OSM-Stammtisch is scheduled for Friday Jan 23rd ’09, 2pm, at the Metalab.