News

Pocket Streetmap coming soon - or at last?

One of the more exciting things I saw, six months ago, in Barcelona, was a demonstration of Pocket Streetmap. It's the same maps you get on the Streetmap.co.uk web site - but looking like real maps. And then ... nothing happened.

Now, at EWT this week, the explanation emerged: Pocket Streetmap, which runs on Pocket PC platforms, has been revamped. A beta-test version should be released inside a month.

"We had a problem; there were too many versions of the software for different versions of the platform," said Penny Bamborough, one of the founders of Streetmap. "So we decided to produce a single code base."

The software looks like an ordinary coloured paper map, with streets laid out as in an atlas. But the difference is, you never run out of paper. Scroll left, and it downloads the next section, and lays it next to the section you're looking at.

There's another improvement, too: the thing doesn't have to be connected to the wireless Web to work.

"We've brought back the Slave Loader," said Bamborough at the Olympia demo, showing how you can now get the maps you need even before you've configured your iPaq for internet access. "The pocket PC sits in its cradle, and gets the data through the PC on the desktop; and it's stored in memory."

The new version should be posted for testing on the corporate web site inside a couple of weeks. Applications using this map will emerge later ... but it includes full maps of almost all of Europe, in beautiful detail, especially of the cities and towns.