Android Geo-location & Maps

Alex Motenko, Liat Kakun, Dudi Aloni, Shay Asher, Assaf Weiner, Alon Zweig, Vasily

Tzukanov, Michael Genkin

Geolocation is...

Geolocation is...

Cellular Triangulation, GPS, IP Triangulation

Geolocation is...

Real world, physical, location of the user.

Geo-location is Cool

Localization & Targeted Content

Geo-location is Even Cooler on Mobile

Location based services & social networks

Geo-location is Even Cooler on Mobile

Location based games

Geo-location is Even Cooler on Mobile

Maps & Navigation

And Many More...

• Security & Fraud detection• Geo-marketing & Advertising• Geo-hashing• Asset Recovery• Proximity Notifications• Crime Enforcement• etc.

But with great power, comes great responsibility...

Privacy concerns, How much information is to much (

http://pleaserobme.com/)?

Maps & Geo-location

The Developer Perspective

Not all Maps Born Equal

• Many ways to add a map to your appo Differ on features & capabilitieso We'll mention a few, details in the tutorial

• Many places to get maps fromo There is more to maps than maps (Navigation, 3D

view, etc.)o Coverage & quality can vary

• Note: you usually need some kind of a key to use maps (sometimes, even more than one)

• Free (for now)• Baseline (well documented, popular)• Easy to use & integrate• Feature rich (Street view, Offline, 3D,

Pins, Navigation, Latitude)• Hard to customize• No detailed maps for Israel (mainly

due to licensing issues with third parties).

• Coverage varies by world region

• The Wikipedia of maps• Free (under open license)• Community generated• Established community of developers• More than just maps (GPS data, aerial maps, user

knowledge)

• Microsoft maps service, Free for now.• Easy to use & integrate (WebControl, or SDK

by                      )• Feature rich (3D, traffic, navigation, street

view, aerial imagery)• No detailed maps for Israel• Mediocre coverage outside the US

Maps

• Free• Must use                          for integration (or

WebControl)• Poor documentation• Very high quality maps (frequently considered

the best maps available for many places in the world)o Israel included.

•  Lots of additional location data included!

• Mobile mapping application platform.• Enables third party application developers (us) to

easily create mobile mapping applications.• Supports many map sources.

 

• Lots of features not available for Google Maps (Line & Polygon vector/raster overlays, preloaded maps, KML support, Custom routing services & map sources)o But can't use the cool Google features (3D, Streetview)

On a Different Note - Waze

• A successful Israeli start-up.• Community generated maps,

turn-by-turn navigation, free.o Large amount of real-time, up

to date, information.o Map quality varies widely

from country to country.• Complex to use, but..

o  Official client source code available (compile & tweak it to your liking!)

o Extensive API•  Map quality for Israel is great!

How to Use A Map

• First get the phone location from the LocationManagero Can use GPS, Triangulation or any other method

supported.• Then draw a map control

o Google's MapView, Provider's SDK (Nutiteq, Waze, Bing), WebControl.

• Don't forget to supply a source and the location to the controlo Sources include - Google, Bing, CloudMade,

OpenStreetMap, etc.• Note: don't forget to register & activate, where

necessary• Further details in the tutorial...

Questions?

 

Thank You for Listening!