Open Street Map, and the trails advantage

Open Street Map is a fascinating project. The idea is to build a 'open source' map of the world's streets based on UGC (User Generated Content), and make this data available free of charge, as an alternative to the fee-based maps from Navteq and Tele Atlas. Interesting, yes. How is it doing?

Well, at first look, things seem promising. Bringing up the map of the USA on the OSM site shows all sorts of roads, and no major holes. But, things are not that simple.

The VAST MAJORITY of the data in the OSM road network in the USA is from the (also free) TIGER/line database, provided by the US Government Census. And although this data is OK from a road vector perspective, it is not fully complete vector-wise, and more critically, lacks much of the additional attribution (max speeds, directionality, and turn restrictions) that car navigation solutions require. Generating that attribution would be slow and costly. The UGC aspect fails here, as who wants to spend a weekend doing that?

Where things are MUCH more interesting are on the trails/walking side. Here, the open, UGC-friendly side of OSM has a huge advantage over Navteq and Teleatlas. On a daily basis, people are walking trails with GPS units, logging their paths, and uploading it to OSM. Quick, fun, and it scales. There, it becomes part of the known OSM world. Navteq's Discover Cities product, which also includes trails, are gathered by Navteq employees and entered into the Navteq database the same way as roads are. It's a slow, costly process, and does not scale.

I'm not sure OSM has a play in Autonav, where all of the complex road segment attribution is missing. But, as pedestrian navigation becomes more important in the LBS/GPS world, I see a bright future for Open Street Maps.

No MMS on the iPhone 2G. Why?

When Apple announced that the MMS feature of the iPhone 3.0 software would NOT be available to owners of 2G iPhones, it set a bit of a precedent. What exactly was that?

Well, it was the FIRST time that a pure software function has been held back from users of older generation iPhones.

In the 3 years of iPhone existence, there has been several major software upgrades. In all cases, unless the new feature was tied to new hardware (3G, GPS, etc) the capability was made available to older devices.

But now for 3.0, no MMS for 2G phones. Why? It's clear that it is not hardware related, MMS is a simple, well understood capability in mobile phones and places no significant demands on the OS or hardware. The 2G is clearly up to the task. And keeping the phones in the Apple ecosystem (and buying apps) is clearly a win for Apple.

So why? Here are some guesses:

1) Apple wants to start to move these users to new phones. Although users of 2G phones buy apps and drive revenue, Apple IS a hardware company, and wants to sell new phones.

2) ATT wants to keep EDGE traffic as low as possible. MMS sends attached images over the data network. EDGE is much less efficient with spectrum than 3G. Maybe the network guys got involved.

3) The conspiracy theory. Lots of 2G iPhones are jail broken and on other networks. Enabling MMS in 2G phones would allows 2G owners on T-Mobile (gasp!) to have MMS BEFORE new users on ATT. How embarrassing.

My head tells me the reason is a mix of 1 and 2, but I'd like to think it's 3. That's just me. You?

The Nokia N97 - Schizophrenic

I've been using the new Nokia N97 for the last week or so, and my overall feeling is rather positive. First, it's very very nice from a hardware point of view, probably the best piece of N-series hardware that Nokia has put out to date. It has the feel of a quality German car to it. Full marks there. One the software side, I'm not so happy. It clear that merging a touch-screen UI on top of Series 60, along with folding in the Ovi store and Ovi Messaging, has created a confusing mess. Too often you get caught out trying to figure out what to do to get something done, or the phone reacts in an unexpected way. Some of the more glaring examples:


Sometimes you need to double tap on items, sometimes you single tap
Very frustrating in the menus. I'm sure it has to due to some items being selectable without being invoked, but that is never clear, and its a mess.

Sometimes you can flick scroll in application or menus, other times you have to use scroll bars
The applications that can use kinetic scrolling are great, but few and far between. The base UI does not, and after you leave a app that does, you find yourself flicking at the screen.


Sometimes HTML will show in emails, other times it will not
Corporate Mail for Exchange does NOT support HTML mail, but POP/IMAP Ovi Mail does.

Sometimes the screen will rotate its orientation, sometimes it will not
You can try to control this by turning off the rotation sensor, bu then you have to open the phone to use landscape.

Sometime you use the SW Update app to find updates, other times you need to use settings.. device updates
There is a dedicated application to find updates to applications on the device, which SHOULD be built into the Ovi store. For device updates, you have to go to the Control Panel, or do the *#0000# from the dialer

Sometimes you need to use the Blue Shift key to get number on the keyboard, sometimes that does NOT work and you have to just press the un-shifted key
This one threw me. Normally numbers are Blue-shifted. But, if the ONLY input that is allowed in an input box is a number, then you HAVE to enter the number by pressing the number key UNSHIFTED. Crazy.


Sometimes the widgets will grab internet connectivity, sometimes they will not
The WRT technology is not completely sorted out when it comes to connectivity, which is not a strong point of series 60 to begin with. If the widgets are using EDGE/3G and you turn on WiFi in a browser, the widgets stop. When will they come back on? Who knows?

Sometimes the Ovi store appears as a web site, other times as an application. Sometimes you use the Nokia Download app.
Where do you get apps? It depends.

New applications sometimes appears as icons in the ‘applications' folder, and sometimes in a random, new folder.
Install a new application, and you have NO idea where the icon will end up. maybe in the Applications folder. Or maybe not. It may create its own folder somewhere else, and go there.


Sometimes the phone wants you to use the keyboard to enter text, sometimes it throws up a T9 pad and wants you to multi-tap
Need to enter a PSK value into WiFi security? You get a T9 pad. If the entry is letters/words, be prepared to multi-tap.


Maybe these things will being clearer with time and use. But Nokia has got to get this right going forward. In the world now full of the iPhone 3Gs, the Palm Pre, and new Android devices, they have to find ways to leverage their scale and strengths while not being caught in the binders of legacy. I hope they can pull it off.

GPS Phone-based navigation - It's about the WALKERS

TomTom announced their iPhone application at the WWDC. It was big news. The very same week, Nokia hit us with a new beta version of Nokia Maps 3.0, with touchscreen support for the Nokia 5800 and the N97. It looks like phone-based car navigation is finally ready to take off. Or is it?

Looking back, you can see that navigation applications for smartphones have been around for years. Gate5, the company Nokia bought to bring Nokia Maps to market, had developed their application over 5 years ago. It was great, advanced stuff, and was created to take on the PNDs of the day.

But here's the problem. These applications, and the business model that supported them, were developed when then state-of-the-art PND devices cost north of US$1000. Putting the capability in a device you already owned seemed to make a lot of sense. Now, with PNDs costing between $100 and $200 dollars, it no longer does. I have a bad feeling that you will be able to buy a low-end PND for LESS than that fancy TomTom iPhone car mount will cost. Why would you do that? For the same reasons, and for everyday use, why would you mount a N97 in your car with Nokia Maps?

Here's where the story gets happy. The TomTom announcement will spur a rush of development in navigation solutions in iPhones (and smartphones in general), and most of the users will be ON FOOT. That's right, not in the car, but walking from place to place. It's a natural use for the phone, and it does not add an additional device to carry for that purpose. Have you EVER seen someone carring their Garmin Nuvi around, like they do in the Garmin ads? Not me. I love my Nuvi, but I think that's a ridiculous idea. Give that capability to me on my phone. The TomTom iPhone app will set off a goldrush of development and new ideas, and the users will be the benefactors.

The challenges will be in how to best use this capability. Current solutions navigate pedestrians by walking them on the roads, and pretending to be smart by turning off one-way streets. This is a significant limiting factor, as people walk in many more places. They walk thru parks. In the woods. Around lakes. You get the idea. Navteq is catching on, as they have created their Discover Cities trails product, but is it only for paved trails in large urban cores. The solution has to be more generalized. Providing an anywhere to anywhere routing solution will be a big part of the final complete puzzle. As you might expect, I've got some ideas about that. email me now, or wait for post next week for more details.

Widgets, and the future of device User Interfaces

I've been thinking a lot about flexible User Interfaces lately, and you should too. I was not there the first time YOU modified the UI on a computing device, but I can guess what you did. You changed the wallpaper on your Windows95 desktop. Me too. It was easy. The problem was that if you wanted to modify more, it got hard. Real fast.

Software designers like to talk about their N-layer architecture, but the problem is that they USE THE SAME TOOLS AT ALL LAYERS. Want to update the UI on your notebook or mobile phone to match your personal requirements? Better brush up on your C++ coding skills. Oh, the source code for the shell is unavailable? Guess we'll have to start from scratch and reverse-engineer those APIs. You can see why that didn't happen a lot.

Fast forward to 2009 and some interesting things are starting to happen. First the new Nokia N97 supports a rich widget structure on the UI of the phone. These widgets, which are developed in web-friendly javascript, html, and css allow you to put what's important to you on your home screen. And the key is that this is dynamic content, not just static views. Someone writes on your wall in Facebook, it shows up right away. News feeds scroll. Weather reports change. It is a great advantage that the Symbian OS allows multi-tasking at the application level. This type of UI is not possible on the iPhone OS2 .0, and I'd expect still not in OS3. Advantage to Symbian here. It's great, and will only get more great as developers pile in. No Twitter widget yet, but I give that three weeks. This technology even runs in a limited fashion on older Nokia phones, and expect to see it everywhere in future devices. My Nokia E71 looks on enviously as my SIM resides in the N97.

As neat as the Nokia Widgets are, what has really got me pumped up is a new OS for netbooks called Jolicloud. It's the future here now, and here's why.

Most widget technologies (like Nokia's) allows you to create and modify widgets, BUT NOT THE CONSTRUCT IN WHICH THEY RUN. On the N97, there are only so many places where and how you can drop widgets, and those are baked into the OS. With Jolicloud, the entire UI as based on web technologies. In essence, the UI is a widget. Its a fascinating concept, and it will be interesting to see how it plays out. Imagine being able to create the entire UI of your phone using web technologies. Here is a key point; this is more interesting for phones than it is for netbooks. The reason is because on phones, you can now expect that they will have ubiquitous HTTP connectivity. This fact will create a HUGE shift in UI design. Looking back, NO device User Interface has ever been created EXPECTING that the device will have network connectivity. The Nokia widgets expect it, but that technology was added on top of the older Symbian OS. That explains the lack of flexibility. If your whole UI and OS expects it, you can do some very interesting things. And, there are technologies that you can embed in the device to handle the cases then network connectivity is not present. Interesting times!

Jolicloud is for netbooks only right now, as it is built on top of a netbook distri of Ubuntu. And they will need to generate traction. And pay the bills. But for right now, they are coding the future.

Garmin Nuvi Maps for $10!

Last week I blogged about a issue I had with PND devices in general. I mused that most of these now-$200 devices came with entire country maps (a good thing), but annually updating that map cost $70! Now I'm glad the device has the entire USA in it for when I go on trips, but for the most part, the VAST majority of my driving is done in one metro area. For me, that's Minneapolis.

I stated in the blog that I was generally uninterested in a USA-wide map update for $70, but I would be willing to pay $15 for the Minneapolis/St Paul metro area. I thought that was the end of the story. Well, I was contacted by some clever person at Garmin who read my blog and told me that the cityXplorer series of metro maps, although designed more for pedestrian use, would work just fine on my Nuvi. Best part, the maps are $9.99! See more here.

I downloaded the MSP map, and sure enough, some major additions to the road networks! To be clear, this is only going to help you if you live in a large metro area covered by the cityXplorer product, but if you do, its a great way to upgrade your nuvi.

I've been in the GPS space for years, and in general Garmin has done a great job in trying to find ways to get updated maps into their devices. As connected navigation and phone based applications start to nip at their heels, this type of innovation is necessary. But for now, color me happy!

What is this beast?

I was going through my phone drawer when I can across this old beast. Having worked at Sendo, I'm no stranger to weird handsets, but this one has me. It's an Ericsson from I'm guessing 2002-ish, and it's very small, with an integrated battery, and an external antenna at the BOTTOM OF THE PHONE. I've never seen that in a production handset. Its about the same size as the world-changing T68, just a bit thinner. The flip folds down to reveal the keypad. I dug up an old Ericsson charger, but alas the phone will not take a charge. It is GSM and the SIM mounts in a pull-out tray on the top, iPhone style.

Can anyone identify this little bugger? Its driving me crazy!

Cupcake, N97, and virtual keyboards

I’ve always been a fan of the Android platform. In the past however, this has been more for its potential, and not for the current state of affairs. So, I was keen to try the much ballyhoo’d ‘cupcake’ Android 1.5 release, and see what it did for the phone.

I’m not going to do a full review of cupcake, others have done that. What I want to do however, is point out a feature that I thought I was not interested in at all, but in fact transforms the device.

I’m talking about the virtual keyboard. Now I’m a huge fan of QWERTY devices, and my love-affair with the Nokia E61/71 range has cemented that opinion in my mind. As the G1 has a very nice slide-out keyboard, I figured that the virtual one would be superfluous. Wrong. I use it all the time. I use it because it allows ONE HAND USE. Now I can send a one or two word acknowledgment to a text or email, and not have to stop and type with two hands.

This has a huge implications for the N97. The form factors of the two devices are similar. On both, the slide out keyboard requires two handed operation. This is reason enough to have a quick-access virtual keyboard. But, the N97 carries the legacy of Series 60, and one of the hallmark design attributes has always been one handed use. Wanna use two hands, get a UIQ device. On the N97 with only a physical keyboard, we will be losing that. Interestingly enough, a virtual keyboard WAS part of some of the initial N97 firmware loads during development, but was removed. My bet is that we see it make its way back in a future update.

The end days for handheld GPS devices

Garmin recently introduced a range of specialized hand-held devices, designed for Golfers. Based on the popular Oregon line, the Approach is now in shops and selling for around US$500. I'm not a big golfer, but it seems like a well built, well designed product. I wish my friends at Garmin much success with it.

As an outdoor enthusiast, I've owned handheld GPS devices since the days of Selective Availability (go look it up!). I used them for many types of tasks and activities. But in the last year or so, most of these activities have become equally (or better) performed by GPS-enabled mobile phones.

I think the Approach is a nice $500 device. I just think it would be a better $15 iPhone application. Or an Android app. Or a Symbian app.

Here's another example. I Geocache, and used to use a Garmin Colorado 400T. Nice device. But now I use my Nokia E71 with Trimble Outdoor's neat little Symbian app. It's always with me, and I don't have to connect it to my computer to get geocaches, because it pulls them wirelessly OTA.

So where does this lead? I think the days of single purpose, unconnected GPS devices is winding down. Now there will always be a small market for specialized, ruggedized, waterproof, autonomous devices, but the VAST majority of use cases will be swallowed up by mobile phones. The market dynamics, economies of scale, and the value of the connectivity make it almost inevitable.