Geowand
 

Is there anything like a Geowand for Maemo 5?

Basically, you would be able to wave the phone at a building or object of interest and then the phone (using gps data) lets you know more about it / hooks up to something like Wikipedia and tells you more.

Re: Geowand
 

AFAIK, Geo-Wand was described as an application "using on-board accelerometers and compass". The N900 doesn't have a compass, so an application couldn't detect which direction your pointing at.

OTOH, it would be nice to have a simpler version: Just a map that shows your surroundings and has clickable symbols on it for each item found on Wikipedia.

You could mail Pierre-Luc Beaudoin, the author of Map Buddy, about it. His application does exactly that, only it displays local businesses. Piere-Luc could re-use the existing code and only change the database he sends his queries to.

Re: Geowand
 

Thanks benny and that's a good idea about e-mailing Pierre-Luc.

Maybe a Geo-Wand could work if the person ran at the object they wanted to find out about? It could get a little dangerous though so maybe your idea is better...

Re: Geowand
 

Nokia is working on various avenues in augmented reality using phone sensors including photo sensor, gps sensor, and magnetometer sensor.

Most of this is under the point and find effort

http://pointandfind.nokia.com/

i don't think this stuff is on n900 yet though

Re: Geowand
 

Very interesting! I didn't know about the Point and Find service from Nokia.

It really makes you wonder why they did not include a magnetometer sensor within the N900 (or did they and they haven't told us yet... :-) ).