Antinormal

Ovi Maps free navigation license, for life

In case you haven't heard yet, Nokia announced that the Walk and Drive everywhere navigation license for Ovi Maps is completely free. Who says you can't get good things for free?

This is probably a response to Google's free navigation service available on Android devices, but Ovi Maps is a better option for me considering it's available in my country (Google is only limited to the United States as far as I know) and it doesn't require a data connection since you can preload maps onto your device.

The N97 currently isn't on the list of supported devices, though, which was a bit of a downer. They're delaying it till the 28th but there's a workaround for people like me who are completely incapable of waiting, sometimes. You need to have at least 20MB of free space on C:. I only had 19.7MB free but I coincidentally discovered the Memory Reorganiser update (from the phone's Software Updates application) for my phone which was able to free up about 5MB of space.

When you've got 20MB of free space on C:, you can use this installer to get all the Ovi Maps 3.3 goodness you've ever wanted. They've also improved on the interface which is very nice. And there's the English voice with street names, which in theory is meant to call out the names of streets during navigation. It's going to be hilarious listening to this with Nigerian street names, if it works.

Meanwhile, I picked up an LG 42PQ30 yesterday which happens to be my first HDTV purchase. And in case you're wondering why I picked plasma over LCD, it was cheaper. What can I say? I'm a slow and cheap adopter of new technology.