[Windows Mobile Apps and Games] loox-user:
Some hints

Hi,

very cool application - thank's a lot! It runs perfect on my Pocket Loox N560.

I would like to promote your application in the OpenStreetMap-Wiki on some pages that collect available software for WindowsMobile devices. I already added a link to this page but I think it would help to add some screenshots as well. Is ist OK to use the screenshots in your first post for the OpenStreetMap-Wiki?

Additionally I would like to give some hints, which might be useful for some of the users:

I think there is no need to develop a tile downloader as such downloaders already exist for PC and WindowsMobile devices. To name just a few, take a look at JTileDownloader or OSMtiledownloader. Both are PC applications that allow downloading OSM-tiles of a specified area and with a specified zoom level to a local directory on your PC. You may easily copy the tiles to your mobile device afterwards. The latest developer snapshot version of JTileDownloader provides a slippy map window were the area to download can be selected quite easily. OSMTileDownloader allows to load a GPS-track and download tiles along that track. Both applications are found on the OpenStreetMap-Wiki.

For mobile devices take a look at the TileManager that comes with OSMtracker, a similar application to OpenMobileMaps that is designed for mapping issues. The TileManager is a seperate application that allows to manage a repository of OSM tiles in a folder on your mobile device. It allows to update tiles that are older than a definable date and to download tiles in an area tha may be defined by Lat/Lon values, radian and zoom level. Once you defined the OpenMobileMaps cache directory as a map source directory in OSMtracker, it is available in the TileManager and the application can be used to keep your tiles up to date.

For your further development (after your exams) please allow me to propose some issues:

Is it possible to implement the search function in offline mode, without a data connection? I am using OpenMobileMaps on a PDA without GSM connection. One great advantage of OpenMobileMaps compared to GoogleMaps is the possibility to cache the map data and use it in offline mode. It would be great to have search functionality available in offline mode as well. I am aware that this means, that additional to the tiles, OSM-raw-data like the planet-file or parts of it need to be available on the mobile device as well. To limit the data volume, you might think about grabbing OSM data only for areas that are coverd with tiles in the cache folder. Another idea is to set the grabbed data detail dependent on available zoom levels. For example if an area is covered only with tiles of a low zoom level (which I did for the whole world), available data and search functionality is reduced to cities while available data detail grows with the zoom level of available tiles on the mobile device. This means that searching for street names or addresses is only available for areas that are covered with tiles of at least a minimum zoom level.

Another advantage of having OSM data available on the mobile device in offline mode is to augment points-of-interest (poi) case dependent onto the map-tiles. For example if you look for e.g. a restaurant (or a garage, a gas-station, a hotel, a bakery, a butcher etc.) in a specific region you might grab that information from the OSM-file and show the locations with markers on your map. Again to reduce the data amount on the mobile device, a downloader application for the OSM-data might allow to define which information should be available for search functionality or augmentation.

Just some comments from my side. Keep on going with your great work, Cipher!

loox-user