8Motions blog

Teeo.Fr
is a new Website based on the J2memap library, and which is a social application helping you to display your friends on your mobile phone.

Nice works from Medhi, the developer, which will share some informations with us about his experience of J2memap soon….

Ok, following some requests, here is another tutorial on how to use the J2memap library. First, note that if you just want to display a KML file on mobile, you can use 8Motions directly, no need to create your own application.

Anyway, here we are going to show you how to create a very simple app that display a KML file on a cell phone. First, download the J2memap library (you need to be registered to download it), and put thelibraryCLDC11.jar (or 10.jar) as a library of your project. In netbeans, you do Properties,add jar/zip,select the jar file.

Here I take a KML file, but it could be also a GPX file, LOC or GEORSS file….

Then, here is the code:

package com.eightmotions.LoadTrack;
import javax.microedition.midlet.*;
import javax.microedition.lcdui.*;
import com.eightmotions.util.*;
import com.eightmotions.map.*;
/**
 *
 * @author tlandspurg
 * @version
 */
public class LoadTrack extends MIDlet implements TrackNotifier {

    MapCanvas m_map;
    Display m_display;
    public void startApp() {
        UtilMidp.checkMIDP(this); //Initialise the utility library…

        // Initialize the map, get the display, and put the map on it
        m_map=new MapCanvas();
        m_display=Display.getDisplay(this);
        m_display.setCurrent(m_map);     

        // Load a track, and display this track to a map
        Track track=Track.getTrack(m_display,“http://www.8motions.com/map/showKml/107″,“Loading Track”,m_map);
        // Listen for track loaded event…
        track.setNotifier(this);
    }

    public void pauseApp() { }

    public void destroyApp(boolean unconditional) {   }

    /* When the track has been loaded, display it… */
    public void onTrackLoaded(Track tr) {
        m_map.displayTrack(tr,true);
    }

    public void onTrackCreated(Track t) { };

    public void onTrackSaved(Track t) {};
}

Here is the result:

Jon Spinney from Maperture blog pointed on my previous post the effort of Christopher Schmidt from GSMLoc to create the same kind of database. So thanks to both of them, I’ve integrated the previous database of GPS cell, and we are now at 15301 cells covered with 541728 mesurements…

Here is a project that I wanted to introduce to you: OpenCellID.The purpose of this project is to create an OpenSource database of GSM cells.

Why? Because this can be used as a “cheap” way to get your location. There is not a lot of phones that provides this access to JavaMe application (mostly SonyEricsson), but this may change in the near future.
The idea is do it in a transparent way for end user, thanks to 8Motions or other applications. This is not a new idea, as Google probably made the same for his GoogleMap mobile application. The only issue, is that the application needs to access to two informations:

• the cellID
• the GPS position

and for now, no handset provides this. N95 for instance, haves a GPS but does not provide CellID information in JavaME. Latest SonyEricsson phone, provides CellID, but not GPS position. I think that new GPS enabled handsets will provide both, but for new you need to use a SonyEricsson phone and an external bluetooth receiver….

You can check the result of collected data on the OpenCellID.org web site….

There were other initiatives like this, but the idea is to provide the Datas as an OpenSource information. The code of the project is hosted on Google Code.

Identificateurs Technorati : cellid, mobile, opencellid, gsm, towers

Dash corporation, who plans (since a long time) to launch a connected PND will bring mashup capacities to this PND: the ability to display user generated content on their PND…Seems not to far to the Mapz concept that I’ve introduced yesterday!

Through Techcrunch

A new version of the library has been deployed. As usual, go to http://j2memap.8motions.com and register to download it!

This correct some small bugs, and include the latest version of the Google Map API numbers….

As you have probably noticed, J2memap as a project is moving to a company. And the great news of the week is that the project of this company was one of the winner of the “OSEO“(in French, sorry!) contest, organised by the French research agency: it was one of the 158 selected file out of 1153 proposed, and one of the twenty selected in the emerging software category.

So last Wenesday was the official ceremony, at “La Sorbonne”, with the french minister of education and research, Valerie Pecresse.

This mean also some funding for the project, and a great recognition as an innovative product. So expect to see more in the future.

This does not mean that J2memap will stop, or will be a commercial product: it will remains a free product for non commercial use….

I’ve just downloaded “MappyMobi“, an application from “Mappy“, one of the leading map provider in France….This sounded good, maps, navigation, and much more from your mobile! Great, so I’ve downloaded the app: 22 kb! Waoww, sounds to be higly optimized!!!

So the app start and…..start a wap connection with the wap site of mappy? So the J2me application was just a “platformRequest” to a good old Wap site!

This must be a joke guys….

.
(this is the wap site wich is opened by the MIDP app!)

Technorati Tags: mappy, mappymobi

Following my previous post on Google’s “MyMaps”, it appears that it’s a convenient way to publish maps on mobile. How: just create your maps on the web, using mymaps, and then kml link can be used to publish it on mobile (it’s onder the meny mytracks->import>from internet and then put the kml link here).
The bad news is that kml link issomething like this: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&om=1&msa=0&output=kml&msid=100794107530973749779.00000111cde574931c1c3

Not so easy to type on mobile. The short term solution is to use something like tinyurl, that can transform this long url into this one:
http://tinyurl.com/ytdb6o

The result is here:

And the mobile version in J2memap:

Note that filled path are not supported, as well as most of the rich text attributes….

Technorati Tags: googlemaps, mobile, j2memap, mymaps

Powered by ScribeFire.

A post that is pending since a long time (sorry Mikhail!):

A Mikhail Novikov, the russian developer behind Jotle, the great mashup between GoogleMaps, Placeopedia, GeoNames, YouTube and Flickr made a mobile version of Jotle, using J2MEmap!

This mobile version provides access to Placeopedia and GeoNames from mobile, as well as a link to Wikipedia from the same application!

Congratulation, and good work!

(the link to the app will be posted soon)

Technorati Tags: j2memap, jotle, mobile, mashup, google

powered by performancing firefox