Maps on Ovi promises to span the phone-PC navigation bridge
By Chris Ziegler 
posted May 14th 2008 8:30PM
posted May 14th 2008 8:30PM
Nokia's just unveiled an interesting add-on to both its Ovi suite of multimedia services and its very capable Maps navigation app called "Maps on Ovi" (naturally). Perhaps sensing the trend toward connected, social navigation devices and services, Maps on Ovi allows users of Nokia Maps to sync routes both to and from devices, ultimately sharing planned and traveled trips online with other Ovi users. Seeing how waypoint searching and routing is something you probably don't want to do exclusively on your phone, the program sounds like a pretty brilliant idea from that aspect alone, and tying in the sharing capability is just icing on the cake. The tentative plan is to have a build ready for public use this summer; S60 devices (read: Nokia Maps clients) will be the first to benefit, but it sounds like Nokia wants to expand it to other platforms in the future.
Doesn't Garmin Mobile XTalready do this? I can share routes/waypoints between my WinMob phone to MapSource running on the PC, and then go from there ...
Do want!
I hope they integrate some sports tracker features intoit, I'd love tracking features on Maps, since the sports focus of sports tracker doesn't appeal to me (I'm lazy lol), and the whole "another app to run in the background" situation.
Monterey Peninsula, in the house!
"Perhaps sensing the trend toward connected, social navigation devices and services..."
Sensing a trend? Nokia have just bought NavTeq for $4 billion and are planning on shipping over 35 million GPS phones this year alone. They've even stated publicly that they're going head to head with Google on mapping services (http://mobilementalism.com/2008/05/15/nokia-google-is-our-competitor/).
I think this is a bit more than just sensing a trend!