Last week at Apps World Conference and Exhibition industry experts and newbies gathered together to discuss the current state and future of mobile applications development. Even the heavy London snow didn’t prevent 2,400 people from attending the show, and it turned out as two excellent days of networking.

With three simultaneous streams (Developer, Marketing and TV, Handset and OEM) the Apps World event aimed to address the entire app ecosystem, and the challenge of development, design and delivery of apps across multiple platforms. Nick Black, CloudMade Co-Founder and Head of Products, spoke at the conference on how location is helping to create and monetize outstanding apps.

CloudMade also exhibited in Developers Zone where we were busy meeting with new and existing developers.

We are always looking for new ways to meet with developers and understand how we can help you build better user experiences and increase your revenue. You can help us by sending information about any interesting events you plan to attend to iryna@cloudmade.com

MiniBar June – Friday 26th June 2009

London’s favorite Friday tech meetup, MiniBar, returns to the Truman Brewery this Friday. A great way to unwind after a long, hot week.

GeoMob – 30th June 2009

GeoMob is a relatively new event that has picked up an impressive follow amongst London geo and mobile developers. This month’s event is being hosted by the British Computer Society and features talks on mobile advertising from AdFonic and local search from Spoonfed. Needless to say, the CloudMade team will be there en-masse

iPhone Developers’ Group – London and South-East

If you missed WWDC and want to find out what all the fuss is about, the July 8th meeting of the London and South East iPhone Developers’ Group is not to be missed. CloudMade will be talking about the abilities and limitations of MapKit, CoreLocation and our own iPhone Maps Library.

To hear more about upcoming CloudMade events, follow CloudMade and Nick on twitter.

WhereCamp will return in 2009 bringing two days of geo hacking, map making and locative fun. This year’s event will be held at SocialText Campus at 655 High Street Palo Alto.

View on a larger map

If you haven’t been to a WhereCamp before, here’s what the WhereCamp organizers say:

“We are self-organized in true bar-camp style. Bring your projects, work and ideas to get feedback from a group of the worlds most passionate social cartographers. Topics are whatever you want them to be. Over the last two years we’ve seen presentations ranging from emergency crisis response such as the work http://ushahidi.com is doing, to local food such as http://www.serveyourcountryfood.net/ to psycho-geography to visualization, to mobile mapping to re-factoring urban landscapes.

The expectation is simply that you participate. It’s your event and we’ll all get out of it what you put into it. As usual the event is zero dollars to enter – we will be seeking sponsorship to make yummy food and other consumables appear.”

The main auditorium at the Google Campus, WhereCamp 2008

Over two days participants will have the opportunity to interact with the world’s leading geo developers. CloudMade will be well represented, making this the perfect opportunity to talk one on one with the people who build CloudMade’s tools and APIs. Get tips, hear about upcoming releases and have your say on future development.

To find out more and to sign up, click here.

Mobile Jam Sessions give developers a chance to talk, debate and share ideas in a fast paced, challenging environment. They fuse the freedom of expression found at “un-conferences” like Bar Camps, or the awesome Where Camp with a topical set of discussion topics lead by industry experts. If you are developing mobile applications this is a great chance to hear the latest and greatest from the people building the handsets, networks and developer tools, as well as catch up with other like-minded developers.

I (Nick) will be leading a discussion about adding social and locative information to applications. We’ll be talking about the apps and approaches that have worked and seeing what we can learn from past successes as well as failures. We’ll also be exploring the different sources of map data that are out there for developers – particularly useful given Apple’s recent announcement telling developers to “bring your own maps” to iPhone applications.

If you want to add location to your mobile app, but don’t know where to start, help will be at hand. Even seasoned geo-pros will discover new, useful information and contacts.

The event is free to attend, and you can sign-up here.

MiniBar is the perfect end of week meet-up for anyone working in technology, new media or start-ups in the London Area. The tech meet-up event like no-other, MiniBar is held in the old Truman Brewery where you can sip on beer (free to early arrivals) and cocktails whilst discussing the latest trends in the London tech scene.

This month’s MiniBar is a Location special, brought to by CloudMade and #GeoMob. The line up includes:

• CloudMade – Nick Black – Why Your Application Needs Maps from CloudMade
• OpenCycleMap – Andy Allan – Why Cyclists Need Special Maps
• Nestoria – TBD
• GeoMob – Chris Osborne
• Power of Information Review – Richard Alan

Entry to the event is free, but you need to RSVP here.

There’s a lot of anticipation at CloudMade about the applications that can be built using our mapping APIs.  If you’re looking for inspiration, you need a quick recap, or you couldn’t make it to the events, read on to find out more.

The OpenStreetMap Story

OpenStreetMap is a global movement of more than 90,000 volunteer mappers who are re-mapping the world.  The project was started by CloudMade co-Founder Steve Coast in 2004.  Like many great inventions, the idea of OpenStreetMap grew from Steve’s personal desire to have a detailed map of his local area that he could use in any way.  He wanted a map he could hack on, so he started making his own map and quickly realized that a community of volunteer mappers could create a map that was far richer and far more relevant to people’s needs than maps created by traditional mapping companies.

Fast-forward to 2009 and OpenStreetMap has become an unstoppable force – with a quickly growing community of mappers who are creating the richest, most detailed, global dataset that world has ever seen.

CloudMade’s developer tools make it easy for developers to build location based applications that harness that rich, detailed, global dataset.

This video, recorded at our London launch event tells you more about OpenStreetMap’s past, present and future:

Turning frustration into action

Just as OpenStreetMap grew out of Steve’s frustrations with the lack of maps for his area, CloudMade grew out of our frustration with the tools that were available for developers building location based applications.

As we talked to more and more people who were also building location based applications, we kept hearing the same things. The frustrations boiled down to these three things that we couldn’t do with online maps:

• Customize the map for a specific application
• Create rich, interactive user experiences
• Use the same maps and mapping services on web and mobile

Beating Google Maps Fatigue

Lots of people we talked to were also getting fed up of the default Google map styles that most online applications use. We wanted to give developers more choice of map styles, so, under the direction of our Tech Lead and OpenCycleMap.org creator – Andy Allan, we set about creating three new styles.

"The Original" is ideally suited to general purpose web applications.

"Fine Line" is a great style to use on mobile devices where its bold coloring and clear labeling make it ideally suited for devices with small screens.

"Tourist" is the style to use in travel related applications like city guides, hotel lists or trip planners.

To give developers even more choice, we teamed up with Stamen Design to create these fantastic three styles:

"Fresh" is a great multipurpose web style that really draws out the richness of the map without overwhelming users.

"Pale Dawn" makes overlaid data, rather than the map itself, the feature.

"Midnight Commander" is a stunning map style that draws on themes of sci-fi and comic books to create a truly unique experience

We wanted to go even further than these six new map styles.  We wanted to allow you to customize the map to make it perfectly fit your brand.

Imagine the power of a map that is customized – both in the features it shows and in the way it represents them – to your application.  The Style Editor is an online tool that lets you create uniquely customized map styles.

This short video shows how you can use the Style Editor to create a map that communicates your brand and fits in perfectly with your application’s design.

You can find out more about how the Style Editor helps you create a unique map based experience over here.

Building Innovative Applications with CloudMade’s Tools

To help you get more out of map data, we’ve developed a set of core APIs that let you interact with a rich map database.  Just a few weeks ago, we gave some of our Alpha testing partners access to early versions of our APIs.  The applications they built range from social networks to real estate search to vehicle navigation to fleet and asset tracking.

To give you a taster of the kind of applications you can build with our APIs, here is a very quick summary.

Your Location History Online with MapMe.at

MapMe.at provides a beautifully customized experience for its users by using the Style Editor along with the Web Maps Lite Javascript library. You can find out more about MapMe.at here.

Turn-by-Turn Vehicle Navigation on a Mobile Phone

TrackMyJourney users can now receive real time turn-by-turn navigation on their mobile phones.  This fantastic application uses CloudMade’s routing and custom image tile APIs to bring sat-nav style directions to mobile phones.  You can find out more here.

Find the Perfect Property with Where-Can-I-Live.com

Search for your next property based on walking or cycling time and view the results on a clutter free map.  Where-can-i-live.com uses CloudMade’s pedestrian and cycle routing API along with customized maps created using the Style Editor and Nestoria’s property price API to give their users a unique view of real estate.

A Flash Mapping API from Advanced Flash Components

Flash developers can access CloudMade’s powerful services in a familiar environment using Advanced Flash Components’ easy to use Flash mapping API. You can find out more details here.

Geographic Analysis Made Easy and Fun with GeoCommons

Geographic data analysis answers a lot of big questions about the world we live in.  Up to now it has been the preserve of highly trained professionals using expensive and complex software. GeoCommons are changing all of that.  Their easy to use online tools like Finder and Maker are bringing powerful geographic analysis to internet users everywhere.

Take a look at the screencast below to find out more about how GeoCommons used CloudMade’s Style Editor to enhance the experience of users of their leading products.

Commercial Fleet Tracking from Nutiteq

Commercial fleet tracking is big business and with GPS chips being rapidly integrated into phones and other consumer electronics, you can bet that consumer tracking is going to take off in 2009.  Nutiteq are at the fore-front of this exciting market, developing a range of end-user and SDK based solutions that let you build advanced tracking and fleet management applications across J2ME, iPhone and Android devices. They’ve been quick to integrate CloudMade’s customized tiles, routing and geocoding services into their APIs, making them the ideal choice for J2ME developers who want to build rich mobile applications without re-inventing the wheel.

Get Started Today!

If this has whetted your appetite for creating awesome location based applications, head over to our Developer Zone.  You’ll find code samples, step-by-step tutorials as well as more real-world examples of our APIs in action.  You’ll also find libraries in many popular programming languages including Ruby, Python, Java, J2ME, Flash and iPhone Objective-C, that will help you get up and running in no time. Find out more here.

OpenStreetMap and CloudMade founder, Steve Coast, will share his insights into the world of collaborative map making, talking about why the world needs free and open geodata, why traditional models of map making are not cut out for a world where maps form a core part of everyday life. You’ll hear how your applications can benefit from the rich map data that OpenStreetMap has to offer.

From mobile phones, to satellite navigation, from mashups to social networks – maps are everywhere. Yet most of the maps we use each day are owned by two companies – Tom-Tom and Nokia. We think that maps are too important to be controlled by a handful of governments and companies. Everyday tens of thousands of OpenStreetMap volunteers around the world are helping to liberate map data by making maps which can be used free of charge by anyone, anywhere in the world for almost any use you can imagine.

By packaging OpenStreetMap data into a set of high quality, professional products and services, CloudMade are shaking up the existing market place. CloudMade co-founder, Nick Black, will talk about their existing APIs which allow developers to embed high quality maps in web and mobile applications as well as talking about future plans for some exciting new APIs and services.

Developers will have the opportunity to talk to the CloudMade team who will be on hand to answer questions about their current and future plans over a slice of pizza and a drink.

Registration for this event is free. To register, click here.

For more information, email nick@cloudmade.com

Unfortunately, the tickets for the event have sold out, but our slides will be posted here straight after the talk.