Now this is cool! KMaps is a Java app for the Treo 650 that does Google local searches for you and displays the maps. This is important because the very Javascript-rich interface that makes Google Maps such a pleasure to use on a big screen is what prevents it from working on the browsers available on mobile devices. This isn’t the first use of Google Maps as a data source and not just a web component (see Google Maps on Nokia phones using the Python for Series 60 phones) and I’m sure it won’t be the last. The limited mobile browser is an important issue for Ajax and other Javascript-rich applications—they must gracefully fail if Javascript is not present, so that Google Maps is useful to me from my phone.
