We program Google Maps using Lat/Long to enable wireless hotspots, construction layout and roads to be built using mashups of mapping data and overlays. We built a wireless portal for Orange NSW which was never used but which we have used to program using XML to geocode points the world over! This includes PNG, Indonesia and Australia and will cover more and more of the planet including India, the Middle East, Asia, Europe and North and South America.
The maps include street maps and satellite maps.
There is no charge for freely available maps but there is a charge for the custom programming and configuration on the server as can be expected for this kind of programming. Our code is not open source though relies on open source or freely licensed subsystems to operate over the Web or mobile phone network.
This sort of programming is very useful for location-based services such as in transport and justice mobile or Web-based information systems.
We will extend our software into these very large countries off our shores via the mobile phone networks which are growing at a rapid rate in these emerging economies like BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China).
In June 2008, we were working with a Queensland Government Spatial Workgroup to define baseline spatial data.
In August 2008, there was another expression of interest in developing an API for programming Google Maps on a PC. We could develop this as we are software engineers. We will gradually build this feature for our own inhouse use.
One recent expression of interest in Sydney, September 2008, was for a courier to run a mobile Web services application to map their vehicle locations using Google Maps. We have experience with Google Maps mashups using MySQL, PHP and Javascript which we developed whilst developing our own custom wireless database originally for Orange but now worldwide. We will build our own inhouse software to do this job.
In September 2008, we started porting the mapping software to Nokia phones (S60).