As users get connected with new-generation smart programmable phones and Personal Digital Assistants, they look for geographic information and location-aware services. In such a scenario, developers need infrastructures and standards in order to provide geographic data and cartographic tools to a wide set of applications and small mobile devices. GIS market offers a rich set of powerful tools for geographic information management, but a simple and lightweight protocol to easily add cartographic functionalities to mobile applications is still missing. This paper presents the compact Geographic Markup Language (cGML), a custom version of GML tailored for mobile devices. By using small tags, server side pre-projected and pre-scaled coordinates, it allows development and deployment of map-based software for mobile phones and PDAs with strong constraints on connection, CPU and memory. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.5.m [Information Systems]: Miscellaneous; D.2 [Software]: Software En...