Google Maps on Mobile Round-Up - June 23/08

The Google Mobile Blog recently published a post on how Google enables Location-aware Applications for 3rd Party Developers. The article explains how Google "expect to see an explosion of mobile applications that use location technology."

Here is some of the early shrapnel from that explosion:

This morning Techcrunch have announced that Plazes, the location based social network, has been acquired by mobile phone company Nokia. Plazes SMS is a great service that lets users inform friends of their location and tie the information into other Plazes services. Nokia, at least, think it has a future as they have now bought the company.

TakItWithMe
TakItWithMe is an amazing new service from EarthNC for uploading Google My Maps and Google Earth geo content to Garmin and other handheld devices. Anyone familiar with using Google Maps or Google Earth can easily transfer online map content including points, routes, geo search results, and Google Earth files to their Garmin GPS device of choice with the simple click of a button.

Here is EarthNC's video explaining their new service,



Winksite
Winksite enables users to create a mobile site and community that can be shared worldwide on any phone. They use Google Maps to show users' current locations. Users can use the map to check the locations of friends and to check which users are in proximity to their current location.

InstaMapper
InstaMapper allows users to track GPS-enabled phones in real-time and see their location on Google Maps. Locations are updated every few seconds and tagged on a Google Map with a small red-dot.

Socialight
Socialight lets users create virtual 'sticky notes' tied to specific locations and share them with their friends. The mobile version is accessible on most cell phones and can be found at m.socialight.com.

WHRRL
Whrrl promises to enable you to connect with your friends from your mobile using Google Maps. You can tag and share locations. Whrrl will also let you post photos and messages from a mobile phone.

MapWith.us
MapWith.us is an auto-geotagging product that will enable you to send photos and messages straight to your Google Map from your Blackberry. With MapWith.us you can find maps of your current location, share photos and news and build a network of friends.

SundayMorningRides.com
SundayMorningRides.com is an interactive community portal for motorcycle riders to access, explore, plan, and share ride tracks via Google Maps. From an SMR mapper, users can interactively explore over 950 road, adventure, and long-distance rides worldwide with geographically referenced points-of-interest, motorcycle relevant services, imagery, videos, rider reviews and weather updates.

Mobile GMaps
Mobile GMaps is a free application that displays Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps, Windows Virtual Earth and Ask.com Maps and satellite imagery on Symbian and Java J2ME-enabled mobile phones, PDAs and other devices. MGMaps can connect to a GPS receiver over bluetooth or use internal GPS features on some phones in order to automatically display the map for your current position.

Google GPSMapper
GPSMapper allows anyone to track a GPS enabled cell phone using Google Maps. There are currently two versions of the GPSMapper. One will run on any OS with PHP and MySQL and the other will run on windows with .NET and MS SQL Server. Both projects use java (J2ME) on the cell phone.

Findbyclick
Findbyclick is a community mapping site that lets users tag and share their favourite places. Findbyclick Mobile is a small application that runs on mobile phones. With it you can search for all content available at FindByClick, submit new points of interest, update information about an existing point of interest, fix the location of a POI or delete an obsolete POI.

J2ME Map
J2ME Map is a mobile application that allows you to browse the entire Google Map database, switch between satellite or map view, zoom in and zoom out, search Google Maps and view the search results on screen. It allows you to tag your favourite locations.

Meteo-si
Meto-si provides free weather forecasts for the whole world on Google Maps and is accessible from a mobile phone. Forecasts for the next 72 hours in 3 hour intervals are calculated for over 2 million locations or any other location that is manually entered.

Bumpr
Bumpr is a free service that stores track logs from your GPS device and renders them as time-based Google Maps for users to share. Using Bumpr you can easily record tracks or trails and share them with the world.

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