Apple, Google: Battle of the Cloud Maps

Nerval's Lobster writes "Google has sent invitations for a June 6 event in which it will apparently unveil 'The Next Dimension of Google Maps.' Meanwhile, rumor suggests Apple is preparing its own mapping service for iOS devices. The escalating battle over maps demonstrates the importance of cloud apps to tech companies' larger strategies." I only wish my phone would hold by default the X-million data points that my outmoded (but cheap and functional) dedicated GPS device does, without quite so much cloud-centric bottlenecking, and leave all expensive data use for optional overlays and current conditions.

Comments

Nokia

[Fnord666]

I only wish my phone would hold by default the X-million data points that my outmoded (but cheap and functional) dedicated GPS device does, without quite so much cloud-centric bottlenecking, and leave all expensive data use for optional overlays and current conditions.

You mean like any number of Nokia phones that support the free OVI Maps application?

Re:Nokia

[JaredOfEuropa]

Or any of the non-free but still relatively cheap navigation apps for Android or iPhone, like TomTom or Navigon, to name a few?

Re:Google Maps Gripes

[EvanED]

I'm not talking about the turn-by-turn directions, I'm talking about the maps. Quick, where are the toll roads? How 'bout now? Or now?

I guess if you just enter in a start and end into Google maps and blindly follow whatever comes out it works fine, but if you want to scan around for alternate routes (hint: Google doesn't pick the best route for going through Chicago from east-to-west or vice versa) or just want to look around at maps, that's not good enough.

Re:Google Maps Gripes

[Austerity Empowers]

In some cities the toll for tunnels is >$10, people do all sorts of weird things to avoid it.

Offline POI

[peterburkimsher]

As a contract job for Galileo (the main offline map for iOS, http://galileo-app.com/ I wrote a parser for the OpenStreetMap data. Those "X-million data points" fill 800 MB in txt.bz2 format, or 8 GB in plain text. That's why they're not provided by default. Anybody interested in parsing the 25 GB OSM planet database can contact me; I'd be happy to help. There are a few awk scripts I wrote that made it quite straightforward, and fast. You can then use BashServer (Cydia) and lighttpd on the phone, with bookmarks added to your home screen, to make an "app". The icon loads a local webpage (127.0.0.1/Scripts/poi.html), which runs Javascript to give a dialog "Enter search terms". Clicking OK triggers BashServer to run the associated shell script to generate a KML with the search results. The script then opens tells iFile to open the KML, which gives a popup asking which application to open it with. Choosing Galileo launches the "Import KML" feature, and your search results are in your offline map! Simple as that ;-).

Re:Google Maps Gripes

[TheRaven64]

I've been using OSMAnd since I got my current phone, and it's so much more useful than Google Maps that comparing them is a joke. The map data (from OSM) has been better in every city I've visited. For example, visiting a friend in Paris, OSM had his building numbered and marked the bank and bakery nearby so it was trivial to find even without GPS. Google Maps just about had the roads labelled. In Brussels, the roads have three names: the one in French, the one in Dutch, and the one on Google Maps. The OSM data had all three. Oh, and the hotel I was staying in was labelled on OSM, while Google Maps thought it was about 100m away from where it really was. Looking for a tango class in Swansea, the building was labelled in OSM, but Google Maps didn't even show the road that it was on. In Cambridge, all of the college and university buildings and cycle paths are labelled on OSM, Google Maps just about manages to label the big university sites and the roads.

OSMand lets you download vector data, so it works fine with no network connection. I've got about 1GB of map data on my phone currently, covering England, Wales, Belgium and the north of France. It can do route finding either online or on the phone. The latter uses quite a lot of memory for longer routes (it's still marked as an experimental feature), but aside from that works very well. Getting to know my way around Cambridge was made very easy by having a navigation aid that understood all of the cycle routes.