Slashgeo

There's a lot of geospatial elements in yesterday's announcement of location-aware Apple's iPhone. There's integrated Google Maps (nothing really new here with smartphones), there's automated location awareness (competing with GPS-enabled phones?) and a plethora of geospatial possibilities since it runs OS X. From what I've read from geobloggers, the first impressions are mitigated. But time will allow more information and pertinent reviews. You can read the numerous Slashdot comments. Take a look of it from the Apple. Read Spatially Adjusted's deception. Ogle Earth asks about Google Earth on the iPhone.

Google's Ed Parsons shares comments on the iPhone and its impact on location-based services. From the entry: "So it’s interesting that one of the key features demonstrated is the Maps application, powered by Google, and its a great demo of what makes geographic information so valuable. [...] The user interface of course is great making full use of the gesture support, the application appears fully integrated with the rest of the phones applications, and most important of all for an LBS application, even though the phone is not location aware, the information presented is actionable - the vital ingredient in any LBS application."

Slashgeo was on hiatus when the iPhone came out. Several geoblogs discuss the mapping capabilities of this overly hyped gadget. Here's some of them. Let's start with a press release on the Nokia N95 and the iPhone raising the bar for mobile multimedia. Ogle Earth offers a link to use a GPS with your iPhone. And a reminder that it supports GeoRSS. A wrap-up from The Map Room. And really worthed are the posts by Peter Batty on Geothough about his experiences with the iPhone and its mapping capabilities. See also previous stories.

The GeoThought blog starts with an entry on the new iWeb, part of Apple's iLife, supporting Google Maps mashups directly. Meanwhile, The Map Room links to a MacWorld article on GPS software for the Mac. Finally, the High Earth Orbit blog wonders if the iPhone really needs GPS capabilities. From this entry: "Geolocation does not mean GPS. GPS is a specific technology implementation of getting a location fix. It is also frought with complications that are most apparent in areas that people may use a mobile phone to find out what’s going on around them - that being urban areas, indoors, or anywhere that doesn’t have good sky coverage. [...] In fact, one of the most complained about features in the N95 has been it’s slow to fix GPS. Nokia finally got it better, from 74 seconds to 57 seconds, with their firmware upgrade. [...] Another problem with GPS - it’s a battery hog. [...] My point is, geolocation does not mean having a GPS. There are numerous methods of automatically locating yourself that doesn’t require listening to satellites 24,000 miles away. [...] So I hope to hear less of people bemoaning the iPhone’s lack of a GPS chip - and instead ask the more reasonable question “Why doesn’t the iPhone do geolocation by cell or WiFi?”" See also related stories below.

AnyGeo reports about Navizon trying to use the iPhone as a gps device. From their summary, "An iPhone GPS hack? Well, if you check out gizmondo it appears that way! This blog thread discusses how the free Navizon GPS app was installed on the iPhone and enables geopositioning and navigation on the iPhone - check it out and let me know if it works for you! See http://www.navizon.com/FullFeatures.htm"

A friend wrote to inform me that within the new MacOS X Leopard (10.5) to be available in 9 days, there seems to be some geospatial awareness at the operating system level, well, more precisely GPS metadata support directly in Preview, the default small application that open any PDF and image file: "GPS Metadata Support: Get real information from your photos. If your image has embedded GPS metadata, Preview will show you exactly where that perfect photo was taken. Open the Image inspector and select GPS. Preview pinpoints the location where you took the photo on a world map. From there you can even open the GPS location in Google Maps." Not exactly groundbreaking, but still nice to see such integration. See also related stories below.

mcknut writes "Apple have recently filed a patent application that suggests that they may be intending to bring map downloads to their iPod line using a technology they've called 'podmaps'. I actually knocked up a ruby script to do this a few years ago and I've put together a blog post with a bit of explanation, some examples, and a link to download the script. Get 'podmaps' on your iPod now." A few related stories copied below.