Flickr announced today that it’s upgrading the maps that support the site’s geotagging feature with the help of Nokia’s very pretty, very detailed maps.
The popular photo-sharing site has previously worked with (and will continue to work with) OpenStreetMap in order to fill in the gaps left by commercial maps but Nokia will be the major provider of awesome, updated maps. You can see below a before and after comparison of what the updated maps will look like (in case you can’t tell, the older map is on the left).
Flickr said that the new maps are available to everyone as of today, but when I use Flickr to go map around I’m still seeing that the maps still have the Navteq 2010 tag (Navteq is a subsidiary of Nokia). Nokia’s map site, however, displays an updated Navteq 2012 copyright tag, which I imagine Flickr will eventually display once the site’s maps are all updated. Even searching for the Tanzanian city of Dar es Salaam, as was used in the above example, I’m still seeing the older map. At any rate, the updates will be arriving soon enough (I presume) so keep an eye out.
Nokia’s having quite maptastic moment lately. Nokia partnered with Bing earlier this year to boost the aesthetic and search quality of Bing Maps while last month Bing announced that Nokia would be providing backend support for real-time traffic info. Last week, Microsoft announced that the upcoming Windows Phone 8 would be getting mapping support from Nokia instead of Bing Maps.