Wayfinder Earth beta demo (video!)

I see that Digital Geography has already beaten me to it for a thorough review, so I’ll add the eye candy:

This was taken from a friend’s Nokia N70. The help section makes clear that Wayfinder Earth is free but that there are plenty of extra services you can buy for it: GPS positioning (if you have a USB GPS device) and also bitmapped maps instead of the vector-based ones. Wayfinder says that screen vector-based maps are more bandwidth intensive than bitmaps. This is not a problem on a Swedish 3G network, but might be elsewhere.

And the 3D globe you see isn’t really a true 3D earth in all its glory. Zoom in closer and you get 2D TeleAtlas maps. Still, it’s a very nice effect, and it impresses people when you show it to them, even the techies:-)

Finally, I was really impressed with the search. The database found obscure East vilage (NYC) bookstores and returned details including phone numbers in no time. Same for Sweden, and I’m guessing a whole host of other countries. The maps themselves are chockablock with points of interest.