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Google Maps opensource

OSM on the iPhone.. not in Dubai !!

I have just returned home from a well earned family vacation in Dubai, a destination that is a cross between SimCity and Disneyland as my wife describes it.

Of course I took my laptop along to keep up with email and stuff, and was thus quite impressed to see Mikel’s post about getting OSM onto the maps application on the iPhone !

Now in my mind this is one of those things that is cool that is can be done but actually nobody would do for real unless maybe they lived on the Isle of Wight, and whats wrong with Google maps anyway 🙂

However the reason for my story is that actually I could only imagine what OSM looked like on the iphone as my access to Mikel’s blog or to be precise the images on mikel’s blog was restricted.

brain Off

So all I got was broken graphics icon, and if I clicked on these to force the images to be displayed I got this..

blocked

So what does the government of the UAE have against OSM on the iphone..

Nothing, actually the web filter was rejecting the images because they were served from flickr and well there are all sorts of images there that may be inconsistent with the religious, cultural and moral values of the UAE !

So I had to wait to get back home to see Mikel’s hard work, although for a few seconds I did think dark forces were at work !!

Written and submitted from home, using my home 802.11 network.

3 replies on “OSM on the iPhone.. not in Dubai !!”

Perhaps Dubai was just helping you to focus on your vacation more 🙂

Glad you liked the hack anyway — sure, no normal person would do this but it’s fun.

Now I see you laid out a little bait with your rhetorical question comparing OSM and Google Maps .. well we can talk about that another time 😉

One thing I will say about the iPhone Maps application, many developers would like to develop their own applications based on it (including adding their own tiles) as we all do with the web gmaps api. Perhaps Google could think about opening it up?

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