Nick Wang
March 16, 2009
5 min read

iPhone Google offline maps - Hong Kong 香港 and Tokyo 東京

I used GMDL (Google Maps Download) and created a Hong Kong map and a Tokyo City map (around the Yamanote-line 山手線), you can download them on rapidshare: Hong Kong - 香港 http://rapidshare.com/files/209543569/iPhone_GDML_Google_Offline_Hong_Kong_maps.rar Tokyo City - 東京都 http://rapidshare.com/files/211314833/iPhone_GMDL_Japan_Tokyo_offline_map.rar

Simply extract and copy them onto your iPhone’s /var/mobile/Media/Maps/ folder. (Of course, you’ll need a jail broken iPhone and installed OfflineMaps from Cydia. Once the folders are in place, open OfflineMaps and you should see this:

So here, the path of these 2 folders are: /var/mobile/Media/Maps/HK_HongKong and /var/mobile/Media/Maps/JP_TokyoCity Touch on HK_HongKong and you’ll see this:

Touch Link and you’ll see this:

Your’re basically done! Now hit the Home button and open the iPhone Maps program!

The Hong Kong map will come up, even though you’re not on Wifi (See? No Wifi signal on top.)

If you zoom out, you’ll see the limit :) Only Hong Kong available in the HK_HongKong map.

Zoom all the way in… this is Lv 1 - building names and MTR exits are shown!

Also! You will be able to see your current location if you are within the range of at least 3 cell phone signal receiver! (Normally, if you don’t have a data plan, you can’t see the map and so you can’t see your location. But now, with Offline maps, we can see that cell tower triangulate positioning is actually available to us all! :) One time after I changed the folder names, Maps couldn’t display the offline maps anymore! I looked into it and found out why - the symlink was still pointing to the old folder. See, this is how offline maps work, when you use iPhone Maps normally with Wifi, it stores caches of map tiles inside: /private/var/mobile/Library/Caches/MapTiles/ What Offline Maps does is it stores the “permanent cache” files created with GMDL in a separate folder: /private/var/mobile/Media/Maps/ When you touch on “Link”, it creates a symlink from the /private/var/mobile/Library/Caches/MapTiles/ folder to the offline permanent cache, so in JP_TokyoCity’s case - /private/var/mobile/Media/Maps/JP_TokyoCity/ , so if you go to /private/var/mobile/Library/Caches/MapTiles/ and type ls -l , you should see something like this: MapTiles.sqlitedb -> /var/mobile/Media/Maps/JP_TokyoCity/MapTiles.sqlitedb . Basically, if your maps doesn’t work, try deleting that link with rm * and then redo the process from the beginning. A detailed tutorial in which I learned from is here. Only sightly outdated for iPhone firmware 2.2 - if you’re downloading your own maps, the new GMDL can convert the maps directly to v2.2, so you don’t need to do the last step of “Mapv4v5Converter”. A screenshot of the tutorial below:

Host unlimited photos at slide.com for FREE!

Comments

cloneofsnake — 2009-05-24 11:28:11

huh? Where did u hear that? My friend’s report from Tokyo - No good, couldn’t use GPS to locate himself. :( I was a little surprised… I thought that since iPhone 3G has GPS built-in, even if you’re not using any cell signal, you can still get GPS location. Not true?

Ignacio — 2010-02-13 16:27:28

Hi guys, maybe an easier way to have true offline maps: this is a new app in the appstore that lets you see, search for places and streets, and calculate routes WHILE you are offline, and for any part in the world… http://sites.google.com/site/truemaps

Alvin — 2010-02-05 18:25:58

I cant seem to fine the copy instead of link map tiles, please help

Alvin — 2010-02-05 04:55:33

hi thanks for your efforts, but after i have uploaded everything and clicked on the HK file, offline maps crashes, any remedies for that?

cloneofsnake — 2010-02-05 10:10:13

This guide is pretty outdated, if you’re on OS 3.0 or above, you need to find new instructions. Basically though, use the latest Offline Maps version, Copy instead of Link the map tiles, also, install Enhanced Maps (another Cydia app) which will enable you to store the map tiles in cache… so if you browse while you’re online, the maps you"ve download will stay on your iPhone and not get erased!

Fernando — 2009-05-24 00:15:01

Your telling me that this is working for you in software 2.2.1????

mimizone — 2010-02-16 16:28:13

is the Tokyo map available elsewhere? RapidShare has been overloaded for the past hours and doesn’t let me download it for free. Thanks. I’ll try true map as well, but I find the OpenMap tokyo map not very detailed. It’s missing a lot of info and streets at the street level.

cloneofsnake — 2009-05-03 11:28:37

you’re welcome, my friend just went to Tokyo, I’ll get his report on actual usage when he comes back. :)

profinite — 2009-05-03 10:42:14

cloneofsnake Thank you so much for the JP_TokyoCity map. Installation was a breeze. It is going to help me a lot when I am in Tokyo from May 11, 2009. I appreciate the great work you have done for all of us! – profinite

Fernando — 2009-04-27 12:16:21

Any update?

Ben — 2009-03-17 07:15:12

And here is a tutorial for Google Maps made in paper :) (just for fun) Pretty sure you’ll like it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9TtDecveCE

Patrick — 2009-04-06 00:04:43

hi i am having a problem with offline maps and i was wondering if you could help me. i used iphonebrowser to move the extracted files into the location you specified, but i realised there wasnt a MAPS folder, so i had to manually create a new folder. then when i moved the files over, and i started up OfflineMaps, it just kept crashing and reboots the Iphone. Any ideas or suggestions? thanks!

cloneofsnake — 2009-04-08 00:14:34

hmm… not sure why it would keep crashing, but 2 things: It’s Maps, not MAPS. Perhaps it’s the new folder not having the right permission? Try running this in Terminal - sudo chmod -R 755 /private/var/mobile/Media/Maps

September 19, 2008 · 4 min read

Making Toys Vs. Developing Software - Agile Hong Kong

Toys vs. Software - Agile Hong Kong (by cloneofsnake) I almost missed Tuesday night’s Agile Hong Kong event - Toys vs. Software, Fight! Had to check the address and the map at a public terminal in MTR at the last minute! Jonathan Buford, Managing and Technical Director at Advanced Design Labs, was there to talk about his experience in the toys development process… and how it’s similar / different from software development. He showed us a few of his past designs, one of which I’ve seen on TV commercials in the US. He also has a product that has just finished development and is being manufactured for the coming Chirstmas season. It was pretty interesting to learn about the specifics in creating new toys. In fact, it was so interesting that we kept asking questions about making toys and Jonathan had to ditched the entire 2nd half of his speech on software development! :) This shouldn’t be surprising, as most of the people attending Agile’s events should have IT backgrounds and understand software development processes and project management. So we all had a good grasp on Jonathan’s explanation on the “critical path” in product development. What really interested me was about the risks - R&D can completely go down the tube if no one is buying the idea. So, to minimize risk, they develop lots and create prototypes quickly. He mentioned Rapid Prototyping machines, saying that eventually users will be able to design and make the prototypes themselves. This is related to crowdsourcing and Cuusoo.com, so I asked him what was his take on “crowdsourcing toys design”. Jonathan thinks that we are heading toward the direction of “user generated products”, there are just 2 factors holding us back - 1) the design tools that Jonathan uses is quite advanced and the general public just don’t have the kind of access to these tools. He mentioned that Google SketchUp is pretty good, and may be some day soon, people can use that to design & make models. 2) is the manufacturing part - how do normal people connect to manufacturers? Obviously, he doesn’t know about Cuusoo.com, it has the entire 2nd part covered! I have heard about SketchUp when it was first bought by Google, I guess it is time for me to pay a visit and see if we can integrate its tools for crowdsourcing design.

September 7, 2008 · 4 min read

BarCamp Hong Kong 2008

Startup Lighting Talks (by 黛) Comrades at Hong Kong’s Drupal group reminded me about BarCamp Hong Kong 2008, it was my first time and I got a really good impression of it. It’s probably fair to say I won’t be the only one who wishes we can have BarCamps more often. I loved it! Check out all the photos at flickr and a general write up about it on LaiHiu’s blog and another insightful one at Ca Phun Ung’s yelotofu. Personally, it felt great to be able to immerse once again in an open, knowledge-sharing environment. We have lots of these events in the US, and they are great for networking. I was able to meet with a few great people and also organized more regular offline meetings after BarCamp. I listened to iPhone apps development (& finding it more and more amazing how Apple can become so popular and “cool” while maintaining their unfriendly, “closed door” stance.) An Open Education open-mic with John Britton (half of it), then jumped over to Microsoft’s OSS session. The lead developer of one of the best online Rich Text Editor - FCKeditor. A Drupal theming session where John Britton informed us about the Knight Drupal Initiative, and we organized what will hopefully become regular offline meetings for HK Drupalers. Finally, there’s the Start-up Lightning talks where I presented my “Environmentally Conscious Restaurant / Food directory” idea. Hopefully, I can connect with a few kindred souls in the 200+ attendants to help spread the site. (Probably gonna use this “currystar” domain.) Finally, met a young entrepreneur, Alvin, who’s still in studying at Stanford… he was working hard networking and spoke with me about having connections to VC in the US. It’s good to know someone who’s so young and passionate! Saw a couple of Yahoo HK developers, I asked one of them how he felt about Yahoo in HK, and he said it’s too “revenue oriented”. I think this is a typical problem with companies that have grown big and also for small HK companies. As a general observation, I think companies (and people) who are “revenue oriented” are often too short-sighted. Because of that, nothing truly revolutionary will come out of them. At the other end of the spectrum, we have visionaries who dream of producing something that will change the way everybody do things, they might create that revolutionary product, everybody loves them, but then they don’t know how to make money out of it. (The classic Slashdot joke: “Create genius product -> Everybody loves it -> ??? -> PROFIT!!) LOL. Rarely do we see phenomenon like Google ~ where a revolutionary idea also crosses over well into a revenue generating model. Generally speaking though, I am supportive of the latter crowd. Take Google for example, they have tons of talented developers but very little managers (they found that managers were killing innovations, so they fired a majority of them in 2001!), everyone is encouraged to spent some of their work hours to work on their own projects! I think most of their products are not making them any money ~ Gmail, Apps, Docs, Reader… etc, but with so many people converging on their platform, something good must come out of it. (Sort of reminds me of how Yahoo was before the bust.) Now, as an ex-Yahoo, (and more importantly, a shareholder!) I really hope Yahoo can produce something “good for the people” rather than “something that helps the bottom line.” I think in the long run, this will help Yahoo gets back on track. For example, Yahoo Hong Kong is the most visited website in Hong Kong, there are so much more they can do to help the locals, so why aren’t they standing at the forefront of it, but rather they are copying local success like OpenRice.com? At BarCamp, one of the guys is creating a mass transit info site - passionately named it whereismybusrightnowdude.com.hk :P As a returning expat, I am like a foreigner who doesn’t know how to get around HK except for the MTR! Other major cities like Tokyo and London already have something like that, people CANNOT live without these services! Why haven’t Yahoo! HK done something similar?

iPhone Google offline maps - Hong Kong 香港 and Tokyo 東京

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