Question

I m experimenting with maps on different mobile platforms. Getting Google Maps to work on Android was easy, following this tutorial. Getting the same to work on Windows Mobile is a different matter. Any suggestions on how to do this?

Google Maps API doesn t seem to support Windows Mobile. Guess I could try using Google Static Maps, but this FAQ entry states: "Note that it is not permitted to use the Static Maps API outside of browser based applications."
I gave a shot at Developing a Mobile Application Using Bing Maps Web Services, but this seems to require a "Bing Maps for Enterprise Account" which is not free for commercial use? I signed up for a free developer account, but when adding the reference to https://staging.common.virtualearth.net/find-30/common.asmx VS2008 returns:

There was an error downloading https://staging.common.virtualearth.net/find-30/common.asmx . The request failed with HTTP status 400: Bad Request. There was an error downloading https://staging.common.virtualearth.net/find-30/common.asmx/$metadata . The request failed with HTTP status 400: Bad

...so I haven t completed that tutorial yet. Anyways, Bing Maps seems more cumbersome to develop for compared to Google Maps. My question is, what s the easiest way to get maps working for your own applications on Windows Mobile?

Answer 1

We recently wrapped up a project using Bing Maps on a WinMo application and didn t find it too difficult at all. IIRC, the Bing license states that you must pay for a license only if your commercial application does not have a free option. You can develop just about any application without a commercial license using the staging servers. THe only difference we noticed was that the staging server tiles the word "Staging" across the served maps.

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