I recently upgraded iPod Touch to the lastest firmware (1.1.4), and the new version of Google maps includes a handy looking ‘locate me’ function where, after polling Skyhook’s database of wireless points, you get a nice target on the map showing where1 you are.

Unfortunately, since the iPT is wireless only (as opposed to also having EDGE like the iPhone), there is one major flaw in the plan. Namely:

You can only find out where you are when you are connected to the internet.

At least in Sydney, open networks in the CBD are few and far between2, and since I know where the open ones are, i don’t really need to use the locate me function there…

The iPT has plenty of space so even a couple of hundred Mb would not really be missed, and runs a version of OS X which is well capable of managing saved data. Two additions would of course be necessary to allow offline operation:

  1. Allow caching of a set area - i.e. ‘what I can see on the screen, but at max zoom3
  2. Cache the corresponding entries in the wireless node location database

Maps.app already caches mapping4 tiles (I scroll around collecting tiles at max zoom if I need to go somewhere new), but every once in a while they disappear so it would not seem to be difficult to add this functionality5.

Armed with these cache files, the iPT would become a viable ‘getting unlost’ tool (I don’t think it is accurate enough to call it navigation, but from my tests it gets it right with 200 - 300m). At the moment, the locate me feature is not a whole lot of use.

  1. More or less ↑
  2. Rumors of free wi-fi citywide seem to have been rumbling on forever ↑
  3. I think you really need the street names if you are trying to navigate with the iPT ↑
  4. In /var/root/Library/Caches/MapTiles/MapTiles.sqlitedb (if you really want to know) ↑
  5. An extra iTunes tab would probably be easiest to mange ↑

Posted in Technology |