[General Topics] Menneisyys:
I'm currently working on two new Bibles concurrently & I’ve written a map downloader. I’d certainly welcome any reader feedback BEFORE publishing the first version(s) of these Bibles - what you would like to read, what apps / services I shouldn't forget to elaborate on etc. I also seek info on whether there is any need for an enhanced version of the map downloader introduced in the last section.

The two Bibles are as follows:

a full roundup & tutorial on all kinds of multimedia streaming, including

listening to Internet radio stations & watching TV shows - the basics

accessing non-streamed network resources - file system-based, pre-created files over both local networks and the Internet

ORB, CorePlayer, TCPMP, PacketVideo’s PVPlayer etc. - all streaming-capable Windows Mobile clients

specific radio / TV listing apps like Resco Radio, Mundu Radio etc.

streaming (and/or transcoding) from a desktop computer using SHOUTcast servers, WME etc.

Problems with limited connections and RTSP (RealOne, HTC's Streaming Media etc.)

RTSP -> HTTP converter proxies

using a VPN connection to play back otherwise (using the given restricted connections) unplayable RTSP (non-HTTP)-based streams

etc.

A VPN Bible:

when may you need a VPN, even if you don’t need remote access to any other private network – for example, if and when you want to listen to /watch RealOne or 3GP (for example, Mobile YouTube or YLE Mobile) streams only streamed via RTSP (because of the client’s inability to switch to HTTP streaming)

configuring VPN servers under WinTel (and, probably, Linux) operating systems

how you can access already-existing VPN’s from Windows Mobile (not just the ones you configure yourself, but any of them)

a review & comparison of VPN-related literature (books), should you want to know more of this technology

Finally, upon a reader request (many people know I’m especially well versed in Internet protocols, including HTTP – the protocol behind the Web), I’ve thoroughly analyzed the HTTP communication used by http://map.meta.ua/, a well-known mapping service in Ukraine. My reader asked me to let for saving the individual maps in a file so that they can be browsed even without an active Internet connection and/or on a Pocket PC (where the original interface may prove pretty hard to use).

Needless to say, I've managed to write an early demo (it doesn’t support all functionalities of the original Flash client) of an app that does this. You can find the Java source of the app HERE. It’s just a demo showing it’s possible - it puts 20 images of Kiev (but you can easily modify it to save the fully zoomed-in map of any other city), continuously scrolling to the left, in ResponseX.png files (I've, in case you don’t want to fiddle with Java sources, the images HERE).

My question is as follows: does anyone need anything similar to download the maps of other online map sources? As, to tell the truth, I can’t follow the (desktop-based) advances in this area, I’m not sure whether it’s worth enhancing this app. As most Flash / ActiveX-based solutions seems to use pretty much the same protocol, I can enhance and further develop this application to download any map (of any town, not just in Ukraine) into PNG files for offline browsing or importing for GPS applications. Feel free to tell me if you need such functionality and whether there are other, better, downloadable maps that would result in my enhancing the application absolutely unnecessary.