- Mon, 2009-09-28 15:29Comments:19
- Mon, 2009-09-07 13:10Comments:23
- Thu, 2009-09-03 12:21Comments:22
The team at Ovi Maps HQ has been hard at work on the latest update to Ovi Maps for web, and the results are online now at maps.ovi.com. We've packed in heaps of bug fixes and minor improvements, and a few very exciting new features as well.
Share your favourite places with the world. You had a great evening in a nice restaurant or visited a beautiful exhibition and want to share the location with your friends? Know a great bar or club in your city? You can now create a place on Ovi Maps and share your favourite places with the world.
Ovi Maps is open to everyone, everywhere. You can now use Ovi Maps on any browser and any operating system for your PC or Mac. We now also have a limited functionality version of Ovi Maps available for Chrome, Opera, Linux browsers and everything else. We are working to bring the full rich functionality of the plugin Ovi Maps version to all browsers in the future.
Discover and share Good Things http://maps.ovi.com/goodthings
A Good Thing is anything cool you want to share with the world. Found a funky new hangout that no one knows about? Heard about a gig, flash mob or club night, and want to spread the word? Add it to Ovi Maps, and let everyone in on the fun. If you live in London, you even have the chance to glorify your Good Thing to the whole world by nominating it to be displayed on the giant signpost.
The need for speed
We have been working hard on getting Ovi Maps running quicker and smoother for everyone, and we have made some improvements in this area. We still have more work to do, but we're moving in the right direction.
We hope you like this latest version of Ovi Maps for web. Head over to maps.ovi.com and check it out!
Cheers
Will - Ovi Maps team
New Landmark Feature
It's great the Ovi maps has this Good Thing feature, very much the same as creating Landmark on Navteq standard. But I find it difficult to edit the Good Thing I have set, I would like to modify the tag placement and the icon type I set.
That's awesome that you're
That's awesome that you're working to support more platforms, and adding cool features such as Good Things. However, you've completely ignored the most frustrating thing about Ovi Maps (both online and mobile). The search is abysmal. It often tells me that things don't exist, whereas Google Maps finds them right off. In some cases, it only matters how I enter the name of the location. If I put a comma between the address and the city, sometimes it'll find it, whereas if i don't, it may not.
Another example, specifically from the mobile client (latest 3.0 beta for touchscreen), is I was in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, searching for Hard Eight BBQ restaurant, to meet up with some Nokia friends, actually. When I searched for 'Hard Eight BBQ', it gave me zero results. Searching for 'Hard Eight' revealed that the name was actually stored as 'Hard Eight BarBQ'. There needs to be some intelligence there.
All browsers, yay!
I noticed yesterday that Ovi Maps was working on all browsers. What a great surprise! Specific browser requirements (and the plugin) were my main gripes with the service.
Even if Ovi Maps is not perfect —and Ovi is the service we all love to hate—, this gave me hope that it'll get there. Kudos to all the team.
bug
i get
cannot connect to remote server when i try to save a new favourite
Works great on Linux
Thanks - finally it is working for me with Google Chrome and Firefox on Linux.
Good Things should be limited in time
The "Good Things" service is pretty amazing for some instant social-media-styled sharing of current information and whereabouts. However, it would be nice to implement some mechanism to delete old entries, especially those that are time-related.
A good place to eat ethnic food might be pertinent for months if not years, but a live gig or a VIP passing by a theatre near you shall be active and viewable only for a limited amount of time. Otherwise the maps will soon become clogged with old, unneccessary tags.
To thie end I propose to add a question at the process of tagging a "Good Things" location:
- For how long do you want the Good Things tag to be active? (min: 1 day, max: 6 months)
This way many old places will be automatically deleted after some time, leaving place for newer ones.
"Sum Ergo Cogito"
cannot connect
Also get 'cannot connect to server" when trying to save favourites. Mac os x 10.6.1 Safari 4.0.3 in 32 bit mode.
My Favorites and Good Things
Nice little social implementation here, certainly room for improvement though. Looking forward to seeing this on the mobile.
As mentioned above the ability to edit entries already placed by the author, delete, link to external website.
Another social interaction where people could possibly vote/comment/add recommendation to placed Good Things.
I like the idea of the 'time bomb' effect mentioned above - this could be further enhanced through the use of colour where new entries are highlighted green, slightly older entries orange.......and so on.
I have also noticed that once you have placed a Good Things you have the opportunity to then save this to your favorites, is it possible this could work the opposite way around where by you recommend Good Things from your favorites.