Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Nokia hints at Nokia Maps 3.0

With the recent success of Nokia Maps 2.0, Nokia hasn't said much about what's next. In fact, the phrase Nokia Maps 3.0 hasn't been used at all. But now Nokia seems to have slipped a hint of what we may see in Nokia Maps 3.0: Location-based triggers

The hint comes in a patent application filed in 2007 and now published here.

The idea is simple yet powerful: Suppose I need to buy something in a drugstore. I create a location-based alert in my Nokia phone to beep me when I go, say, within a block of a drugstore. My phone then watches my GPS location, and checks the map info it has for my location to see when I go near a drugstore. As soon as I do, I hear a beep.

As maps get more and more detailed, alerts of this sort will get more and more powerful. Drugstores, department stores, food stores, etc, are all likely to soon be on mobile maps. And location-based triggers will remind me when I'm near somewhere to get something done.

Of course, the concept isn't really a new one, but Nokia's the market leader now in cellphone-based pedestrian maps and location-based services, and they can probably take an old idea and make it practical and usable. So this seems like a nice fit.

Any comments?

1 comment:

Onno said...

I have that service already up and running in the netherlands without Nokia. And even more powerful than the examples you described: moving Points Of Interest (mobile phones). This way qou can trigger a text message that is sent to me when I'm near a friend....l