Saturday, August 07, 2004

Using MobiMap while on the Road

I had been to Oxford Street today, took the bus for a change. Since I was in the bus I decided to use MobiMap just to see how good it was in a so called live environment.
It was particularly interesting
Initially I could not get any connection to multimap server, I guess the server was down or profile my user access had been terminated since it may have been more than a month since I have been using this service. I managed to get connection to the server after about a couple of retry I guess the server were over loaded that instance. Here I should probally provide some detailed error message saying that mutimap server has been heavily loaded and so it cannot service your request, this is something like putting the blame on multimap, but hey it is not my fault.!!!!

I was looking for Regents street as I was going by bus and I realized that it took me about 3 Map Images to locate exactly where I was I guess this was due to the fact that I was moving on the bus, but then too I was in London and with traffic so how fast could I be moving. I still have to fix up something with the Up,Down, Left and Right Navigation stuff. Since when I say navigate Left the new map image is shown with the Viewable window at the center of the map which doest help much since I have just navigated left so I would like to keep the Viewable Window at the right so I can sort of connect streets from the previous screen and the current left navigated screen.

Another think that I noticed as I walking through Regents street and a few other cross roads, was that I as I move off the location on the map I will have to navigate left or right (depending on the direction that I am walking in) this sends the request to the server to fetch a new map image it take about 40 sec on an average to get the new image, and when the new image is display the viewable window is at the center of this new map, it takes a while for me to pan around and get to the point where I am on the new map, this is even after me having a rough idea of the different places around. I guess I should allow a sort of 'Previous map Image' operation that would show me the map image of the previous screen.

I guess MobiMap is a really interesting application and very usefully but it is definitely not a complete replacement of a paper map ( the onces that require a talent to fold), MobiMap can be used only in emergencies and probally when you are going for an interview to an office in the city.

No comments: