Maps and Location-Aware Applications

Maps are ever more prevalent in today’s web applications, providing a highly usable and interactive way of viewing and analysing ‘geocoded’ information.  A commonly seen consumer example would be a property or travel website, although these types of application tend to provide pretty basic mapping functionality and are really just scratching the surface of the true potential.

We’ve been developing on what was the Virtual Earth platform, now called Bing Maps, for many years and have truly deep expertise that extends far beyond the boring ‘dots on maps’ functionality.  Our own Bin Round, Fleet Metrik and Haulier Enterprise solutions use maps extensively and include functionality such as hand-drawn polygon geofences using satellite imagery, geofence penetration, routing and ETAs amongst other things. We can also build map-based apps on the Google platform but, for now, Bing offers a richer set of features and a better user-experience, so is our platform of choice.

Actually, you’d be surprised how much geocoded information is available on the web and how valuable that can be if you bring it all together at a ‘location’. For instance, if you have a business with a number of office locations then using a map on your intranet to pull together travel, weather and local event information would help to plan travel from office to office.  

Maps offer an alternative and highly interactive way of analysing data, finding information or providing functionality to help you work smarter and make better decisions.