Map Results to your Mobile
Remember a month or so ago when I wanted a solution to print to my mobile, mostly so I could bring a map of a destination I found on the computer with me without having to print it out to paper? Well, it looks like the Japanese mapping company Navitime has come up with the same sort of solution according to this post by Paul Baron over at IN-duce.net:
One wonders why it wasn't done earlier but Navitime has finally made it easy to take the map of your destination, searched for on your computer's browser, with you on your mobile phone, not on a print-out.
Well of course, using mapfan or mapion you can do that, providing you have a Docomo phone and that waiting for each super-charged-in-ads page leading to your correct destination and cutting-pasting a URL into your mail client doesn't make you print it out first.
Navitime offers that really light and fast service to all 3 AU, Vodafone and Docomo phone owners and displays under that final map a link that opens up your email client and pre-fills it for you (address in the subject line and URL in the body), or a QR code that your camera enabled phone can read and links automatically to that map on your phone's browser. Even better, if you have AU's Navi Walk service, your phone will automatically offer you to show you the way from where you are now to your destination.
Having a killer service sometimes hangs to such little details.
This is pretty great. Now if Yahoo was smart (and I'm *not* trying to give it ideas since their online solution is similar to what our WaveSpotter J2ME client does on the mobile side) they would hook up their new Yahoo Maps with the new Point of Interest locations (POIs) to their mobile services section. They already have everything in place to enable this instantly - they know my user name, and that's associated with my Yahoo Mobile profile with my phone's number and capabilities. I should be able to look up a map on Yahoo, and if I'm logged in, click on a button that says "send to my mobile" and off it goes - a WAP Push message with the map at the top and the POIs listed at the bottom.
Of course Yahoo - like most American portals - probably doesn't take mobile phones seriously yet so this won't happen for at least 9 months to a year if ever, so that's nice to know. It's amazing it took them this long to add POI data to their maps.
-Russ