Cool Usb Toys


USB gadgets as far as the eye can see.

   

OffMaps v1.2

author Posted by: George on date Jun 8th, 2009 | filed Filed under: Applications, iPhone / iPod Touch

I am the owner of an iPhone 3G and I really love it, but why build in a GPS if you don’t have any decent use of it? OK maybe if you have a dataplan you could maybe use googlemaps and see where you are but then still would that be quick enough to keep your map data coming?

Last week I acidently found OffMaps and let me tell you what it is and does and you will see that you want in on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

After you install OffMaps on you phone you see something that resembles googlemaps but then only the map so no satellite images. Now where ever you go on the worldmap the maps you see it stores and you can zoom all lot to make the map even more accurate. You can also select a piece of map and tell how much detail you want stored. This selection can unfortunately be not more then 50MB but you can load more of those maps (I didn’t find a limit) so you can take all the maps you think you need with you.

For instance I now have Calgary (where I live) Banff (where i like to go on the weekends) and New York  (just for fun) on my iPhone and this used 183MB and yes i like lots of detail. And if that scares you then let me tell you that you can of course delete parts or all the map data stored on your device so that you can take only what you really need.

The Map data is pretty accurate although maybe not as good as Googlemaps but OffMaps uses and opensource map from OpenStreetMap and that means that if you don’t like the current data then why don’t you help improve the map yourself.

With all the maps you need on your device now you can start traveling around it has the option to tell you where you are by using the GPS of the iPhone and it is quick much quicker I ever saw on application for the iPhone the nice thing is also that now when you are moving it moves with you and it tells you how fast you are going and in witch direction you are going.

You guessed it for me this is just the application I wanted it helps me find my way around town and although it does not offer the option to search for street names you can place bookmarks so that you can find where you need to go.

What did I find that I didn’t like? not much really just one thing that kinda took me by suprise and that is I looked at a map at home at the biggest detail then I left home and went to a different part of the city there I turned OffMaps on and let it tell me where I was nothing strange there and it nicely pointed where I was BUT no map and guess what I had a map of this part of town but just not at the same detail as i used at home so now i needed to zoom out to the right zoom level to see my street and that to me is something that could have bin fixed in the software but really that is the only thing that bugs me a bit 🙂

All in all of just under 2 dollars you can have a great map application that works great with you GPS for me no doubed this is and will be one of my favorite iPhone applications.

     Add A Comment

trackback Trackback URI | rsscomment Comments RSS

Security question: Time limit is exhausted. Please reload CAPTCHA.