Hi all,

I wrote a pure Java application called iPhone Offline Map Kit (iOMK) that can do the following:
1. Download map tiles from several sources including google maps;
2. Convert downloaded tiles into iPhone map database format (OS 3.x);
3. Combine several iphone map DBs into one DB.
4. A command line version to invoke all those functionalities, so that you can make your own nice iPhone maps when you have access to a server (say, linux box via ssh).

The 3rd feature is extremely handy. You can produce one map DB containing different shapes of regions and/or different zoom levels. For example, you can have one DB containing two cities of zoom level 1-17 and the area between them of level 1-13 (which is more than enough for this kind of area, e.g. highways). This tool provides you with great flexibility in creating iPhone offline maps. The only product compares with it is GMDL, however it requires Windows and dotNet platform to run, and only supports a rectangular region with a single zoom level range, which is far less flexible.

I want to do some alpha and beta tests after Jan 1st, so I'd like to see how many of you will be interested in getting an early version to test drive. It requires a jailbroken iPhone, and a platform running Java (Windows, Linux, MacOSX, ...). If you want to participate, just follow me (mrzzheng) at twitter, shoot me a message to let me know. http://twitter.com/mrzzheng