Google Mobile Mapping is great

location based services


The one application that everyone should download to their phone is Google Mobile Mapping. Hands down, it’s the only J2ME app that has ever mattered; nothing created before it is worth downloading.
You really shouldn’t be caught out with Google Mobile Mapping on your phone. Performance is excellent, and most importantly the latest revision features an improved UI that never loses anything you’ve taken the time to type. It’s a design principle often stressed with designing AJAX applications: “If the user spends time creating the content, do anything and everything to keep from losing it”. That point isn’t lost on Google. It takes time to type in an address, and you’ll be happy to know that you don’t need to type it again between sessions. It’s well done, well thought out, and I’m jealous that I wasn’t on the team that built it.
I’ve long believed that 2008 would see J2ME finally emerge as a solid platform for innovative mobile development. I say 2008 instead of 2007 partially because of manufacturers like Motorola who need a better VM on their mass market phones, but more so because I’m hoping the Location Based Services JSR’s will finally be implemented on enough consumer phones with GPS. At that point when “where you are” becomes available to 3rd party applications, a huge slew of services customizing your phone experience around your physical context can be enabled. This is everything from navigation, friend finding, location based advertising, location sensitive social apps. That said, it doesn’t mean you couldn’t have developed a compelling J2ME application in 2004 or 2005 targeting phones which supported floating point arithmetic (CLDC 1.1 phones), it’s just that no one did do that. No one except for Google, with the first version of Google Mobile Mapping (called GLM - Google Local Mobile at the time) shipped in 2005. The only drawbacks as I mentioned earlier is the poor performance on Motorola phones(not Goog’s fault) and the lack of Java Location Based Services APIs (also not Goog’s fault). Currently Nokia, Sony and Samsung all have decent JVM implementations. That’s all the big players with the exception of Motorola. Currently the Motorola VM on their phones like the RAZR, SLVR, PEBL, etc… doesn’t handle memory well, and is plagued by performance problems. This is a complete and utter shame as the phones are so popular. As long as you aren’t using a Motorola phone, go ahead and download and the first time you need local search or directions on your phone, you’ll be glad you did.