GLOBAL – This week, San Francisco has been playing host to the Where 2012 conference. It’s a place where developers and companies gather to discuss current location-aware technology, and also future possibilities. Nokia had a stand there to show off what we’ve been working on. In case you missed it, here’s a Where 2012 Nokia Maps update.

One of the first pieces of Nokia Maps news to come from San Francisco is how Nokia is building a location platform named the Where Platform. The platform has been designed to enable developers – not just from within Nokia – to create a digital map using Nokia Maps information and market-leading functionality via a set of APIs.

So, if you’re a developer and want to use a Map in one of your projects, head over to http://developer.nokia.com/maps for more details and guides.

The second piece of news from Where 2012 was a general piece explaining more in depth about how Nokia Maps works and how it’s useful to all of us using it.

The reason that Nokia Maps is able to show you relevant information is beacuse it makes use of all the sensors on board your smartphone. Sensor-rich phones are vital to making sure you’re accessing information that’s important to you, where and when you need it most.

With a bit more talk about the Where Platform, it’s clearer on how this platform is helping companies across the globe with their location-based apps and services. Yelp, Yahoo! and Groupon are a few organisations currently using the Where Platform.

In the third and final piece from The City by the Bay, our Nokia Maps guru Pino Bonetti tells us all about the new improvements to the various Nokia Maps services.

If you’re looking for navigation or any information on anywhere in the world, maps.nokia.com on your computer browser should be your first port of call. Heat maps is a very visual way of seeing what’s cool and what’s hot in over 340 cities around the world.

Lots of people living or traveling in major cities will probably get from A to B via public transport. You can now plot your route using public transport with the ability to set arrival or destination times. For those plotting a route using the driving options, you can press the helicopter icon to be taken on a 3D flight tour, so you’ll know exactly what your route will look like.

Those glossy city guides we’re all used to flicking through have now been included onto maps.nokia.com. Receive local temperatures, local facts, professional Lonely Planet reviews and user generated photos from the Flickr community.

Although Nokia Maps 3D is already rather amazing, the Nokia Maps team have created a version that’s even 3D-ier than before. Load up the webgl beta version of Nokia Maps 3D and pop on some red and cyan 3D glasses to be dazzled.