Want to display maps embedded in your Symbian app? We need you!

[millarm]

All,

We are working on a portable map rendering solution that enables LBS application developers to display very high quality vector maps with custom styles in their applications.

We are working on an S60 version of the library for release to developers and are seeking beta testers of the library.

We are interested in talking to you if:

1. You have an LBS application concept being actively developed for S60 devices
2. You want to render data that is either stored locally (e.g. data licensed from Navteq/Teleatlas or Open Street Map)
3. You have a service that can serve vector data for local rendering on a device
4. You want to create amazing looking, unique maps on S60 devices

You can find details of the library here:

http://www.cartotype.com/

And you can see a video of the library being used to render a perspective view route through Berlin here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY5zq8DQAvQ

If you are interested, please reply here, or contact me directly with the following information:

a. A brief description of your application (with screenshots/links if appropriate)
b. Details of whether your app is aiming to be commercial/non-commercial

Either contact me directly at matt@cartotype.com - or comment here.

[millarm]

Any interest from readers on this forum?

[ltomuta]

Apparently not.

[millarm]

I know, curious - as it's an area that S60 is not a richly supported as for other platforms.

Android has a Google Maps API, iPhone has a MapView API, Windows Mobile has an MS Virtual Earth API - yet S60 doesn't provide anything.

Which is unfortunate as there are a rich set of Nokia devices with GPS embedded.

Yet it seems developers here aren't very interested in displaying maps on S60 devices - so no chance of seeing your, and your friends location in any S60 social networking applications.

Or maybe everyone is happy using tile based solutions. :-)

[ltomuta]

There is fair amount of interest for a native API that would give access to the built-in API but unfortunately that is not available. Anything that would require a bigger effort (and investment) than that is probably less interesting for developers.

Then again, your offer is not unique. Navteq offers a map player component as well and the maps data that go with it.

What you may want to clearely advertise here is a) how easy it is to use your API abd b) how cheap it is

[millarm]

Most of the existing map rendering solutions rely on the delivery of pre-rendered bitmap tiles.

This works great if you want a north oriented, top down map. If you want a perspective view, custom rotations and a unique look to a map then they don't work quite so well.

That's where Cartotype excels - as the screenshots at http://www.cartotype.com show.

As for the API - it's possible to create and draw a perspective map in about 10 lines of code - full API details are on the website.

As for cost - we are flexible, and are exploring advertising funded models that would allow us to _pay_ developers to use our map technology - but if nobody is motivated to build apps with maps on S60 then that doesn't help!

[vdharankar]

Any interest from readers on this forum?

If this is a job apportunity or alike then there is a different place on forum for that probably you may find better intrests there