时间：2022-10-11 06:03:32
If you wanted precise road directions in Delhi a few years ago, an Eicher map was the best bet. The kind of detail it provided had never been seen on maps before. But today, there is a map as detailed as Eicher’s in every pocket, albeit in digital form, and all you need do to find out exactly where you are at any time, is to pull it out and look at it. Key in wherever you want to reach and it will plot the shortest route to your destination too.
Satellite imagery and maps have been close to my heart ever since a story on them got me my first front page byline in a national daily. I thought I was abreast of whatever was happening in the world of digital maps. Yet Google Map Maker came as a complete surprise. Like many other revolutions of this decade, this one too is being carried out by the man on the street – literally.
Conceived and develo p e d b y L a l i t e s h Katragadda in 2005, Map Maker, which went live in 2008, allows every individual to map locations – roads, boundaries and other such information – on Google Maps. Today, its users are updating maps with local knowledge in 200 countries. According to Katragadda, most of these countries, including India, did not have detailed maps beyond the urban areas, as creating them was prohibitively expensive. But now you have even dirt roads in villages mapped, thanks to individuals who think they should do their bit and make a difference.
While some do it for the pride of mapping the boundaries of their village high school while sitting in Silicon Valley offices, others have just made it their mission to map their part of the world. One look at the Pulse page of Map Maker and you will see new updates every second –there is everything there from service roads to water sources and schools. And this treasure trove of information is being used by governments and NGOs to plan and implement de- velopment projects, especially in the developing world.
In India, users are updating maps in every state, except in the Northeast where the concept has not really caught on. “The trend is purely following broadband,” says Katragadda, who hopes the Northeast too will get more broadband in a couple of years. With the coming of these maps, we in India, no matter where we are, can finally get to wherever we want to without having to ask paanwallahs for directions. No wonder India is one of the world’s fastest growing markets for online maps. Recently, Google launched features such as voiceguided turn-by-turn navigation and live traffic updates for six Indian cities. Much of the data was obtained from Map Maker.
And it is not just Google. Nokia too is on an overdrive to provide online and offline maps in its phones. The Nokia Drive apps, which come preloaded in the Lumia model, also give turn-by-turn navigation along with other details such as estimated time of arrival and speed limits. The navigation works even offline, or when the data connection is feeble.
You have apps like Nokia City Lens, which uses augmented reality (AR) to give a twist to location services. All you need to do is point your phone at any street or city block with this app and local businesses and points of interest in the area will pop up on your camera screen. Although apps like these are not new, City Lens is, perhaps, the first to make AR work for India, again due to its exhaustive local content.
What does this mean for standalone GPS navigators? Their very existence is threatened as, however popular they may be at present, they don’t seem poised for a huge technological jump in the near future. Already, while the Google Maps app provides live traffic information, very few navigators have this feature
In maps the term ‘user friendly’has acquired a new dimension.