Maemotalk

Maemo Mapper Basemaps - Should I provide / host them?

May 31, 2006 on 10:19 am | In maemo, nokia770 | 5 Comments

I have been playing with the maemo mapper application (without a GPS) and have found it to be useful. Google maps has done a really impressive job of providing a 2^16 level of detail for at least a few parts of the globe. I am really looking forward to the time when it is truly global, and includes roads and cities on all the continents, not just parts of north america (currently there is no real detail below USA) and most of europe, japan. Missing are any detail in South america, africa, australia, asia, the former USSR countries, and the middle east.

My quandary is that on one hand the content is owned, licensed, distributed, and all rights reserved, etc on the map content (and the corresponding map tiles) by Google. Simply stated, i don’t believe that it is legal for me to download and host these files, no matter how much I acknowledge and proclaim that Google owns them. However, on the other hand, i know that bandwidth and hosting costs. Everytime we download the same set of map tiles, Google pays for the cost of hosting and delivering the respective files. Out of respect for Google, I also feel we should do what we can to minimize this resource burden on Google.

Perhaps this is a bit of peeking into Pandora’s box, but I have written a script to download and correctly structure the Google map tile files for Maemo Mapper. I currently have several of the high levels in nice tar.gz files suitable for loading on the 770 as a basemap for Maemo Mapper. I even went so far as to write another script to prune out the completely monochrome files (representative of a featureless part of some ocean - 301 bytes), and then package up the remainder.
The question that I throw out is this - Should I provide these base map files to the community? I do not believe that i should provide the scripts, since then we would be abusing the ownership rights and the resource rights (by providing the means for thousands of people to download wholesale from the map tile server).
I look forward to some comments / opinions.

thank you

ubergEEk

Updated - thttpd webserver for maemo

May 12, 2006 on 9:50 am | In maemo, nokia770 | No Comments

I have repackaged the debian arm thttpd webserver for the 770. At this point it is completely functional, but the package lacks some of the niceties that I expect of finished packages. Such as a script to clean up orphan logs and pid files, or a script to create a link in the /etc/init.d directory or start automatically at reboot. I will get to that later.

At this point i am trying to figure out how to use this server standalone (ie when i am not internet connected). Opera keeps complaining about a lack of connection and doesn’t really seem comfortable displaying a webpage without an active connection.

To install the package do the following:

Install

1. Install the thttpd package
2. Open xterm, enter ’sudo gainroot’
3. enter ’su -’
4. enter ‘ln -s /var/lib/install/etc/init.d/thttpd /etc/init.d/thttpd’
5. enter ‘/etc/init.d/thttpd start’ to start the server.
6. the webserver is now serving on http://127.0.0.1:8000.

The configuration files are located at /var/lib/install/etc/thttpd. The server is running as user ‘user’ and is serving to all requests and hosts - which means your 770 is externally browsable. If you want to restrict access to local only, add a ‘host=127.0.0.1′ line to /var/lib/install/etc/thttpd/thttpd.conf.

Content is located at /var/lib/install/var/www and should be set to world readable.

For more information on the server go to http://www.acme.com/software/thttpd/

NOTE - This is not a maemo port. Just a repackage of the debian arm thttpd package located at packages.debian.org.
ubergEEk

Update - I have found a way to create a fake connection that doesnt turn on the wifi at http://maemo.org/maemowiki/DummyIAP. It appears to work and once validated it will become part of my installation script. thanks to Andrew Barr for the quick response on the lists.
PS - Like everything else on this blog, use at your own risk. Just because it worked for me, does not mean I assume responsibility for anything you do.