

Nokia Unveils a Maps Service - sravfeyn
http://www.here.com
Related article http://www.technologyreview.com/news/507186/nokia-unveils-a-map-service-that-lives-in-the-cloud/
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aw3c2
_a Maps Service that Lives in the Cloud_

What does that mean? Honestly, I do not understand it. Name-dropping the
"cloud"? Is that meant to be negative or positive? Any big map service is
bound to run on multiple redundant machines, isn't that the cloud?

Seeing
[http://static.here.sc/maps/39568/core/features/intropage/img...](http://static.here.sc/maps/39568/core/features/intropage/img/shots/around-
here.png) I cringe. Measuring distances like that does not work in the field,
you can almost never walk in a straight line. Distances must be calculated by
appropiate means of travel, eg streets for cars/bicycles or ways and walkable
areas for pedestrians. Somewhere at Nokia a team of cartographers must be
sobbing into their glasses of beer.

Looking at random places I know, I can debunk their claim of "Most accurate
map". OpenStreetMap is more accurate at those. (Anecdote!)

This leads to my next critic. They want people fix/enhance the map data for
them. But then it is NOT _shared_ back, only as map image. The data stays with
Nokia and you probably cannot even export your own contributions. Same as
Google really.

Adding "social" to a map service is a great idea. I was always wondering why
none of the big players did that.

The 3D stuff is amazing.

~~~
Nursie
Personally I liked their older model - a map and nav service that lived
entirely on the handset. You could take the whole world with you, which is
very useful in some of the more remote areas (like parts of Australia).

~~~
zippopalermo
You still can...

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Nursie
uh... good! Is that available on their Win Phones too?

Not that I'm looking at buying nokia any time soon, I only replaced my N900
with a Galaxy Note earlier this year.

~~~
freehunter
One of the big draws of Nokia Maps on Windows Phone is that you can download
offline maps of the entire world.

~~~
shrikant
...and on all of the Symbian^3 crowd of phones as well. Quite a lifesaver when
travelling around Europe and not wanting to get gouged on roaming data
charges.

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upthedale
Nice little experience as an Opera user when enabling the 3D view. It
recognised my browser and explained quite simply how to enable WebGL. (Go to
opera:config#UserPrefs|EnableWebGL and set the value to 1).

I think other websites could learn something from this, instead of thrusting a
link to 'upgrade' my browser to chrome or safari or flat out failing.

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kaolinite
Their street view is horrendously low quality. Would have thought that if you
were going to go to the effort of mapping out streets (quite extensively too),
you'd use high definition cameras.

~~~
mjs
FWIW, it's okay for me (London).

~~~
bruceboughton
Central London - the imagery is horrendously low quality. Looks like camera
tech from 6 years ago.

~~~
rthomas6
From 2006? Was camera technology really improved that much since then?

~~~
nakedrobot2
Absolutely it has. Resolution, noise, dynamic range have all improved
dramatically since 2006. Compare the Canon 5d (1) from 2006 and the 5d Mk3
from this year - pretty decent comparison. It is no contest.

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rplnt
The aerial data for my location are at least 8 years old and very low quality.
It's interesting to see so back into history but not really useful.

edit: comparing it to other sources, it seems like it's from 2003

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dmd
Literally every single business (34 of them) within a quarter mile or so
radius of my home is wrong. Either closed, grossly in the wrong place, or
never existed in the first place.

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ghshephard
You didn't mention where you live. Canada? Australia? China? UK? Brazil?

~~~
dmd
Boston.

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risratorn
Really impressed by the fluent 3D view and the exploration mode for some
cities. Good job Nokia!

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flyosity
None of the map tiles are retina-optimized, it looks terribly blurry on my
iPhone. Also it doesn't try to autocomplete addresses as I type them in, I
find that super helpful on all other map apps. Absolutely nothing makes me
want to use this again.

~~~
liotier
What does "retina-optimized" mean ? Apple's love of closed systems has not yet
extended to requiring specially processed images for optimal display on Apple
hardware...

~~~
sliverstorm
_retina-optimized_

We've got marketing departments to thank for that one. Leave it to them to
invent another word for "high resolution".

Although, I suppose there probably was a need for a new word. "HD" has been
strongly tied to 720p/1080p, so people associate "HD" with those qualities.
They needed something that was _more_ HD, without resorting to the silly name
progression that was used in radio. (HF, VHF, UHF, etc)

~~~
liotier
There are quite a few standard denominations for resolution : ★VGA, ★XGA,
Q★XGA etc. see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_display_resolution> for
the whole collection.

And then there is the ★HD family : nHD, qHD, HD (720p), FHD (1080p), QHD, QFHD
(4K), UHD... Those are established and provide a somewhat logical progression
from HD.

But then I may just underestimate Apple's need for branding and the prevalence
of NIH at the marketing department.

~~~
sliverstorm
VGA/XGA/QXGA is good technical denominations, but good luck marketing an
abstract acronym. "HD" works as a marketing term because, somewhere along the
line, everyone knew it was short for "High-Definition".

I consider myself a techie, and even I didn't know that "VGA" was "Video
Graphics Array", and "XGA" is "eXtended Graphics Array". Nor would those
phrases mean anything to the layman, even if they did know.

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JonLim
Didn't realize this was posted higher than the other one. Anyhoo, I was
initially unimpressed because I zoomed into Paris and the 3D view didn't work
very well, but I discovered Toronto.

<http://i.imgur.com/ldgtc.jpg>

And you can view it yourself here:
<http://here.net/43.6461465,-79.3878013,15.9,349,72,3d.day>

Very visually impressive and doubly so that it runs in my browser without any
extra plugins and at such a smooth level.

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platonichvn
I'm impressed by how good the 3D view looks. Good to see that a company that
is struggling is still trying to innovate.

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sravfeyn
Related article by TechnologyReview
[http://www.technologyreview.com/news/507186/nokia-
unveils-a-...](http://www.technologyreview.com/news/507186/nokia-unveils-a-
map-service-that-lives-in-the-cloud/)

~~~
mjs
"Here is available through a Web browser and as an iPhone app." Anyone know
how to get the iPhone app? Doesn't come up on the store.

EDIT: Ah, the answer comes later: "Skillman also showed off the iPhone version
of Here, which will be available as a free app in the next several weeks."

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tchap
Anybody managed to get an API key for this service ? Seems that
<http://developer.here.net/myapps> (which is linked elsewhere in the site and
looks like the url for a developer dashboard) is broken (even when you're
signed in or at least trying to sign in with a legit nokia developer account).

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ommunist
Routing in the UK is much better on here.net than in Apple iOS6 Maps. Will
Nokia release the iOS app?

~~~
joefarish
Would Apple approve it?

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jarek
Vancouver satellite imagery is over three years old. Geolocation by Canadian
postal code less accurate than Google or Bing.

Though points for detecting my browser and telling me how to enable WebGL for
the 3D functionality, and Toronto 3D is pretty good.

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Groxx
Awkward 3 or 4 different interfaces with different ways to transition between
them in each one. Links that go nowhere / don't really work / leave UI that
doesn't move when you zoom. A decent effort, but less finished than even
Apple's result.

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huskyr
The 3d view is pretty impressive, although opening the webinspector crashed my
Mac :(

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thesash
I just tried 2 searches. My current address, and my current city. Both failed.
Google maps handles them no problem. They could have the best data and nicest
maps, but if their search sucks, what's the point?

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marcusmacinnes
Not sure what all the comments about the "amazing 3D" are about. Apple's 3D
maps implementation is infinitely better (not that 3D maps are in the
slightest bit useful...)

~~~
jarek
Now curious - can you post a screenshot of how the Royal Ontario Museum
'crystal' building looks like in Apple Maps? It's at 100 Queens Park, Toronto,
ON. This is Here's view looking approximately west-south-west:
<http://i.imgur.com/psWne.jpg>

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achy
The collision detection on the 3D view is strange. When you hit an object, the
zoom level is decreased until you clear the object (in this case the top of a
building).

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galaktor
satellite image quality outside of major cities seems way better than on
google maps, at least for some of the places in Ireland that I tried, i.e.

Here: <http://here.net/53.3395769,-6.5376296,18,0,0,hybrid.day>

Google maps: <http://goo.gl/maps/V55lW>

Edit: fixed google maps url

~~~
pionar
haha, Ireland, i.e. - I see what you did there.

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nachteilig
The tilted 3D view has the same sort of skewing that Apple's new maps app has.
Anyone know what it might be about the algorithms that make them do that?

~~~
bitL
Both are using C3's data. C3 is a company that provided 3D data to NOKIA for
the first version of 3D maps released two years ago and NOKIA made a terrible
mistake to allow Apple to buy it and use C3's 3D data for their own maps. The
mesh simplification algorithm used is based on edge collapses according to an
error threshold, hence the strange skewing.

Disclaimer: I worked for NOKIA L&C on 3D + cloud + navigation.

~~~
Too
btw, hitta.se used the same(similar?) technology many years ago, but it
required java or maybe even some proprietary plugin to be used. Don't know why
it's gone now as it worked pretty good, and it had 3d coverage of cities that
neither apple nor nokia has now :/

Do you know if apple and nokia bought exclusive rights, or why would hitta
suddenly drop the feature?

~~~
bitL
Yes, hitta.se used C3 (Java IIRC). I believe it was their pilot project as
both companies are from Sweden (possibly with government/universities
involvement) and they used airplane stereovision to generate 3D, which would
explain fantastic detail of the whole Sweden (I remember looking at the funny
rotated skyscraper in Malmo). To be honest, I don't know why did hitta.se drop
its 3D maps. I was playing with hitta.se before NOKIA bought the technology
from C3 and there were internal rumors that C3 will be acquired. I would
assume licensing costs were the main culprit; given the use of airplane
flyovers, the data extraction was very expensive.

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jtarud
Why are they rerouting here.com to here.net? Why use the .net if you have the
.com?

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hornbaker
Whoa, trees are modeled in 3D.

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blakerson
Central Tokyo has about as much information as central Pyongyang.

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zem
ran into an odd bug right off the bat - "directions" generates a proper turn-
by-turn list of directions, but the map pane goes blank rather than displaying
the route.

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bruceboughton
What an abysmal name. Most of the time you use a web-based map and at least
half the time you use a mobile map, you are not looking at "here" but where
you want to go.

