As I mentioned previously, I bought a bluetooth GPS receiver for the trip so that traveling in Portugal wouldn't need to be a constant peering of maps. Since I feel much more comfortable with things I can tinker with, and because such an alternative to closed GPS software exists through Maemo Mapper, I chose not to purchase a commercial navigation software package at all.

For those unaware of it, Maemo Mapper is a program for the Nokia 770 and N800 Internet Tablets that interfaces with OpenStreetMaps, Google Maps and Virtual Earth to provide an Internet-connected map browsing and navigation package. It depends on (gateway-translated) Google Maps for route information, and otherwise functions by downloading maps to a memory card cache.

This is a pretty cool program, showing what might be the disruptive future for navigation and location guides in a cooperative, Internet-connected world. It's also one of the more usable applications for the Nokia platform. I wish the platform in general was as well designed for its primary purpose as Maemo Mapper is. If a way to share the track records and point of interest data with others is found, I feel this application might become a category definer. Great work by just one author, John Costigan.

We've spent the last week walking about in Lisbon, driving in the countryside hill roads, and navigating around in the Atlantic coast. While I've used Mapper on and off before to consult maps, on this trip, thanks to the GPS receiver, it's finally become a constant companion instead of a curious diversion. With this experience, I've also seen where it currently (in version 1.4) falls short of a perfect experience. As I write those findings down, I will post them here as suggestions.

Google Maps POI

I wrote a tiny Perl program to process Google Maps' new My Maps KML files to a Maemo Mapper POI database (download). This should probably be converted to Python to be easily installed to the tablet itself, but for now I simply ran it on my laptop and then transferred the database over.