In this feature article on location based search services and software (also known as searching the world around you) Steve gives a round up, with real world examples, of the current state of the market. With options from Nokia, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Yell he asks what software or service options performs best? Read on to find out.
Read on in the full article.
Couldn't seem to find the article.
The links to the article dont work.
All fixed. In Rafe's defense, his pasting in of the wrong hyperlinks was done at midnight on a Sunday. I'll make sure he gets time for a lie-in this morning!
@Steve: Sadly you left the mobile map24 application out of the loop. There is no GPS support I think. But it does support location based searches and it's POI is one of the better. Second it is very fast. It's vector based and its zoom function is a beauty. It would be nice to add it to the list.
Rather regrettable that one hospital did not show up on your map. And perhaps Nokia Maps 2.0 could get a 1ste aid/hospital category. You seem to have some clout at beta labs 😉 However in health emergencies I tend to call 112... Finding hospitals is seem a huge problem over here with Maps 2.0 beta.
Better yet in the netherlands I can go to the Nokia search application, select the 'yellow pages search' plugin. Type hospital, type the local city and voila I get the list of the 5 local hospitals. Select show on map, wait for sat. lock. Selecting the nearest and then 'drive to' it. Alternative I can select hospital and 'local position/known location (=saved places) or 'from map'. However these latter seem not to be working quite yet (at all) as they should. Then again Maps 2.0 is still beta.
Cheers,
Snoyt
@Steve: I remembered that when having an internet connection I got different search results then when searching my stored maps. So, booting maps 2.0 beta with internet off, typed '0' got to my local position. Typed 'hospital' in the new 2.0 beta search window. And got only hospitals, it did skip two hospitals that did not have hospital in the name. Clearly the search function is not yet 'done'.
Selecting options->search->places in internet-search mode off. I can get a category 'hospitals' that lists only hospitals and has special entries noting 'emergency'. Nokia Maps 2.0 is still beta. It looks it should score full points in your test when finalized. Particular since you can find a hospital even without a live internet connection 😉
P.S. Above unregistered was mine to..
What I really dislike in Nokia Maps is the way it makes water disappear if you zoom in around to 50%. after that magnification everything is the same colour let it be a river, a park, a town or anything.
I'm using Nokia Maps 2.0 and when I search for "hospital" I get 25 hospitals come up, all the ones that are anywhere near me (admittedly the search does take a few seconds though). Furthermore there is a specific category for "hospital" in the "business & services" section (I went straight there to look for it, seemed intuitive enough) and in that category are all the hospitals within a few miles of me (and they're all there).
Several comments:
- Privacy: Why block your postcode? Plenty of people live in your postcode. If you are legitimately worried, use the office, or some other arbitrary location instead. Because it takes about a minute and a half to triangulate your position (with great precision) from a few of the matches you show. They have addresses and distances...
- Maps zoom out still shows the first screen of results (top 10). Typical on desktops also. Dunno why. Makes it hard to usefully expand the search area, yes.
- Different results, different platforms. Also baffling to me. Testing an iPhone, it failed over and over to even find this street address. I put it down and type on the desktop, word for word the same search and get it. Through the same service. Routinely get different results order as you saw, even though its all google, and I am just not sure why. Seems bad, for trust, reliability or even mental model purposes; data is data.
- Database quality does vary. I seem to (aside from that one thing above) always be able to find business, even very obscure ones, with terrible search terms (I am often wrong as to their actual category) anywhere near my metro area. Travelling is sometimes very poor, however.
I love Google Maps on my Nokia 6120c, but of all the map/nav programs I have on my phone (Google Maps, Nokia Maps, Yahoo Go, and AmazeGPS), Google Maps has the worst colors/contrast of them all. In daylight, it is incredibly difficult to see in my car cradle. The contrast is just terrible. I hope they'll fix that someday.