NavFree on iPhone

Powered by NavMii a satellite navigation application, NavFree is offered for free in the iPhone App Store and iTunes. Here's the consumer test...

On first impressions I like the easy to use interface and the mapping is OpenStreetMap, which is fast becoming a favourite of mine.

With the map interface itself we are off to a flying start as it shows my current location, you can click on items of interest on the map, for example restaurants and it will display their name and how far away they are from your current location. From here you can click Route Here which will then calculate the route to your chosen destination or for other option you can click Options. You can zoom in or out of the map and change the view from 2D to 3D. A nice little feature is the iPod button which lets you play music through your iPhone while still being able to use the SatNav.

What will probably be much underutilised but is a great addition is the ability to report a fault with the mapping data, for example if a street name is wrong or you know a particular street is one-way you can report it. OpenStreetMap is built using such crowd-sourcing techniques and can only help to make this a richer datasource because of it, so for me this is a welcome addition.

NavFree allows you to search for a full address, postcode or points of interest (POI). Here I was a little frustrated, firstly attempting to find an existing postcode: Start typing a postcode in and it will present matching postcodes in a list below. However on at least one of the postcodes I tested it insisted on a space in order to find a match to sector level (e.g. SW1A 1) and then beyond this point would not find a match although at sector level it had displayed the postcode in the list.

In the same way the address search is frustrating, typing the full road name including road, street, close, etc returns no matches but without this matches are found. I do understand that once you have added the first part of the address you should then be able to find it from the list but try explaining that to your other half when you're already driving and want them to set up the SatNav. From what I can tell there is also little in the way of house number information and this may be where the full NavMii version comes in. Also, getting back to the home screeen once you start an address search is not straight forward as you have to press the back button a number of times.

The POI data seems to be fairly comprehensive for cafes and pubs but I couldn't get it to find any airports, the rest I will let you discover.

Like
OpenStreetMap
Crowd-Sourcing Map Error Reporting
Easy Map Interface

Dislike
Address, Postcode and POI search

Your voice - Join the debate

Discussing the implications of Geographic Information Science, Technolife have set up a forum to get your opinions heard - it may be your only chance.

The Technolife Digital Globes debate aims to provoke debate on ethical issues relating to digital globes (as they have chosen to call it), the outcome of which will be provided to high level policy makers in the European Union.

The Technolife team want your participation to get a rounded view of what the main issues are. To get that the more people that get involved the better. Watch their short video, register and start getting your thoughts heard.

ESRI(UK) - freeance exclusive distributor

ESRI (UK) has been singled out as the exclusive distributor of the freeance mobile software for the BlackBerry in the UK, (via GEO Informatics).

This lightweight distribution allows mapping content from ArcGIS Server to be displayed on a BlackBerry. As GEO Informatics points out, this is an opportunity for the public sector customers to realise efficiency savings as this application can be installed on an unlimited number of BlackBerry's. Information can be gathered in the field without the need for the field worker to return to the office. I can see that such an efficiency saving can also be extended to any company that uses ArcGIS Server and has a number of field workers.

To complete the software distribution, freeance mobile server is installed on top of ArcGIS Server and is then ready to start pushing maps out. The theory is that there is no need for any programming in this distribution.

Delicious GIS

I wanted to find out what was currently of most interest to those using GIS. This got me thinking, how can I do this without adding a poll to my blog and in a way that would be most representative. After a little research and a little thought I went to the delicious website, typed in GIS and I was actually quite surprised by the results.

Delicious is a bookmarking web site where you can save your bookmark to websites of interest to you and access them from anywhere where you can access the web. A great idea especially if you float around from place to place. But thats not the end of it, delicious as a result are able to turn this on its head and it is possible to use such information to provide information like what is the most bookmarked site.

Currently at the top is OpenStreetMap, which in retrospect shouldn't be a great surprise with it being one of the highlights as far as background mapping goes of this year. But it did surprise me, I somewhat blindly believed that it would be something like support.esri.com which, for anyone who has delved in ArcObjects will know, is probably one of your most commonly visited sites when trying to debug ArcObjects. From here this got me thinking, delicious not only simply collate the number of common bookmarks they can also tell you a lot about a person like what our hobbies and interests might be, and maybe even delve deeper into what sort of films we like and dislike - something google has built its empire on with those content specific ads. This is the world of collective intelligence.

So what can GIS do to help with this you might say but just think for a moment, we already use it to help for example supermarkets understand their market place. They can tell you what you bought and when you bought it and many will not be surprised to know that this information is used as a supermarkets character reference about what you like and dislike and by using your address information they are able to build up a complete picture of the market around each of their stores and what attracts their customers.

Extending this further into the likes of location mapping and location based services, if advertisers could tell where you went they could also place ads in locations where people that might be interested in their product are more likely to see it. As smart mobiles become mainstream advertisers will be able to show you adverts that are location specific like the chinese across the road that has a two for one offer on today. Scary prospect?

Apple turnover

This week, for the first time, I became the proud owner of an iPhone and became another Apple turnover. Drawn by the seductive advertising and my frustration with my Nokia smart phone and the not interesting Ovi.

Ovi maps was a great addition to my Nokia phone and I used it while on holiday to great affect as a navigation aid. However it wasn't without some frustrating errors which in the main seem to be as a result of little thought about how it would work on a mobile phone - I know, weird when this is Nokia we're talking about. Ok so its designed to work on a phone but, as with any such device, I didn't always have a signal and that seemed to be the crux of the problem. You dare not open the application while indoors for fear of losing signal (or not finding a strong enough signal) and then being forced to restart the phone to get everything else back up and running again. But this wasn't supposed to be a rant about Nokia or Ovi...

One of the first Apps I downloaded onto my iPhone was ESRI's ArcGIS App, while doing so I did notice some other interesting Apps that I will return to at some later date. ESRI's App is fairly simple to use, and a great way of cataloging and using map layers from a number of different sources. I really do like the fact that you can add your own ArcGIS data source and connect to ArcGIS Online for more content. There are a couple of simple map tools which allow you to identify locations, measure distances and areas and zooming in and out is a cinch. Without logging in to ArcGIS Online you are fairly limited in functionality. I do have one small gripe that arose while working with the App, after I found the location I wanted I decided to change layer to something else, the map changed to its fullest extent and the location was lost. The only way back from here was to look in my previous searches or search again.

I can't help but feel that this is in some ways a showcase App with little real grit - That doesn't mean I'm not going to at least try in the coming weeks/months to use it how I feel it should be used.

Open ESRI

Two developments in recent weeks really have caught my eye:

(1) ESRI releases its Geoservices REST specification, (via James Fee's blog) and,

(2) ESRI's geoportal is offered for free and more significantly open source (via Directions mag - all point blog)

What is significant here for me is not the fact that they are seen to be following trend and answering to the needs of their clients but that they seem to be positioning themselves to follow the very successful strategy adopted by, for example, Red Hat.

By releasing more of the functionality into the open domain they will be able to concentrate on offering services in implementing and administering a GIS. In an environment were the code is in the users domain, development will no doubt grow at a pace not easily achievable with the constraints of in-house development. As a result the key to success and to ESRI's survival is to be able to help their clients handle the pace of these releases.

With the cloud now being seen as a real way forward we will no doubt see ESRI take more unfettered steps to offering a suite of cloud solutions, whether that be in partnership or going it alone, and this repositioning we are currently seeing will no doubt aid in this.

Reality Check

The guys across the pond often talk about leveraging a product, to somehow find a way into an existing market space, or create a market space. So why not create a phone App that uses location and gives you information in realtime; what if you could use the camera on your phone to view your environment and show you useful information like where the nearest chinese restaurants are along with ratings or what am i looking at right now - ok so this is not a new idea and has become known as augmented reality but surely we can come up with a more snappy name than that - I suggest "Reality Check". Any other suggestions?

Late to the party

Ok so i maybe a little late to the open GIS party but i've been discovering that there are some pretty interesting applications out there - I surely can't be the only one starting to dip a toe into the unknown and finding that there are now some real alternatives to those big names in the Geospatial industry.

For just one moment keeping away from the developments on mobile devices like the iPhone or various Android phones, have any of you found spatialLite? As you might guess it's a lightweight database with spatial elements. Based on sqlLite, its a great portable database which comes with its own simple mapping GUI.

If thats not enough for you, then why not get a copy of QGIS. You might think this looks like a more traditional desktop GIS and you wouldn't be wrong. Whats great is you get all that functionality and access to quite a few formats including spatialLite. Come across OpenStreetMap yet? This application actually lets you download small chunks of the data, edit it and post it back - brilliant!