So I was thinking of ways we can get some functionality like Google Maps Navigation for Android 2.0 devices. There's no way to get it fully function like what you see on Droid and other future Android 2.0 devices unless Google creates one for Maemo, but I was thinking if it was do some of the functions if the n900 was fast enough to load the Google Maps page.

For example, if we have a geolocation aware browser then we just need a script or some macro function (unaware of the equivilants of AutoHotKey on Windows in Linux) to input your your destination in B constantly. Then all it would need to do is refresh the page to update Google Maps. We can even get Google Street View to work partially. Traffic would just be turning on the traffic layer since I believe Google is harvesting the data from all the people who use Google Maps and putting it into the service for everyone to use anyway.

If we don't have a geolocation aware browser then we would need a script or program that polls your GPS location and then inputs it into A constantly.

Problem with that is that Google might change directions on you depending on location since their default pathing is set on fastest route. There's also no voice navigation, something like might require a seperate function. For example, having a gmap to gpx like function that converts instructions into GPX from the Google Maps website and having flite read out the directions as you approach the latitude, longitudinal coordinates.

So what does everyone think? Is this even remotely possible?

Yes, is basically what their app is, with an LGPLed rendering engine (WebKit or Gecko). The app could use gtkembedmoz and use liblocation.

Otherwise, /usr/bin/browser (at least in SBox x86-32 environment) is not linked to liblocation.

Hmm, and Fennec has its own location API.

Mozilla is using the geolocation API. Unfortunately the back-end for the Maemo browser, which would be needed to use it, is not implemented yet.


Cheers Daniel

Would it be possible to implement this as a standalone WRT, instead of using the browser?

Nokia Web Runtime is not supported in Maemo 5. See this thread for more information.

Cheers Daniel

I think that this is possible in Firefox (fennec). It will support Geolocation and ship with a default geolocation provider that uses Google's Location Services.

As for the the default web browser, this also uses Mozilla. I would imagine that someone could build an "addon" that wraps liblocation's functionality. It shouldn't be very hard.

I wonder if nokia could really be interested in open source when it reads these things. They spent something like 8 billion euros last year on navteq and the people that built maemo are implementing a way to use on maemo, google turn by turn navigation.
Well I don’t know, but sounds strange.
It would be better for nokia to make it free like google.

Navteq map on their own. Google is a licensee of TeleAtlas (TomTom). This costs Google money, and also the EULA of Google Maps disallows certain usages.

I think the point he was making was, as the most successful open-source businesses will point out, that the money is in the services and support, not in the binary software. Had Nokia led the charge with open-sourcing the Wayfinder app that used their pay-for services, that same app might have ended up spilling onto Android and the desktop/laptops and other platforms -- heck, maybe even have been included in Linux distributions, such that it might have headed off what Google has shown to understand better than Nokia does.

How would Nokia be able to afford that? Google sells the data where you are, while Nokia doesn't, and money doesn't rain! We have a problem here...



Many people say that Google is very competetive, but due their lack of privacy, they have no competition, simply because no one can beat their offers.