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Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Nokia Maps on Ovi

Against the backdrop of the recent online mapping market shake-out, marked for example by Ask Maps and Sensis' business directory website Yellow abandoning their own mapping platforms for Microsoft's Virtual Earth/MapPoint and Google Maps respectively, it's refreshing to see a new kid on the block! While most attention today goes to the introduction of the Nokia Maps 3.0 mobile navigation application for Nokia devices, this wouldn't be the webmapper website if I were not rather drawing your attention to the fact that Nokia's maps are now also available online on the Nokia Maps on Ovi Service. It doesn't really come as a surprise: a first alpha version was demoed at the Where 2.0 conference earlier this year and was even picked up by Wired.

Maps On Ovi

Just like Walk and Drive are paid services of the Nokia Maps navigation application, the website only offers visitors to look up addresses on the map and to store these as favourites. Map navigation is very natural. Dragging the map allows you to browse in all directions, while double-clicking or moving the slider allows you to zoom in on a particular location. There are also the three map types that everyone has become familiar with: map, satellite, and terrain. Furthermore, visitors can choose from a list of POIs (e.g. hotels, restaurants, libraries) in the Settings to view on the map, but they cannot search for them. The POI button allows you to quickly switch on/off all POI categories at once.

Given the fact that Map24 is part of Navteq now, which in turn is owned by Nokia, you see many similarities. Whereas Map24 relies on Java Runtime Environment for its interactive mapping mode, users of Maps on Ovi are required to download and install a browser plugin. Thus, the map can be streamed to the browser in vector format instead of map image tiles that are the bread and butter of the slippy map JavaScript-based APIs, resulting in an even smoother user experience, particularly noticeable when zooming in and out. Since vector maps also allow for much more flexibility in map rendering, Map24's 3D view option (tilting) is available to visitors of Maps on Ovi and they can also smoothly change the orientation of the map view (rotating) while the lettering (text on the map) maintains its horizontal alignment.

So, is online mapping going away from JavaScript-based APIs? Visitors indeed seem to become less reluctant to go through the tedious steps of downloading and installing an application, because they do get rewarded by the extra features that come with it. For example, to get more out of Live Search Maps you have to install the Virtual Earth 3D plugin and the Google Earth Browser Plugin allows you to view Google Earth embedded in a web page.

What's next up for Maps on Ovi? Will we see travel directions for drivers and/or pedestrians? Maybe we'll see some traffic information from Traffic.com — another Navteq acquisition — on the website at some point? I can't wait! It would also be interesting to see how Google is going to respond. Going by the Wired article, the two really are becoming competitors more and more.  permanent link for this entry