|
Newsletters
|
|
|
|
|
Creating New Revenue Opportunities for the Wireless World with MapInfo
By Larry Delaney, director, location-based services at MapInfo, June 27, 2002
Today’s mobile subscribers are demanding location-enhanced services, which provide relevant, personalized and valuable information right at their fingertips. MapInfo, a global software company, is providing the framework to make this possible. First of its kind for creating unique, location-enhanced mobile services, the MapInfo® miAware™ Developer Services Program enables application developers and content providers to create new revenue opportunities based on unique and valuable location-based services (LBS). Participants in the miAware Developer Services Program (www.mapinfo.com/developers), have the opportunity to take advantage of miAware’s proven, robust development platform to quickly create commercially viable mobile applications and content for sale to wireless carriers and enterprise customers.
Commercially viable applications for consumers include location-enhanced games, city guides, automatic vehicle tracking and directions. For businesses, applications boost productivity, cut operation costs and increase competitive advantage by connecting remote workers to corporate systems. For governments, location is critical in mobile applications that enable crime prevention, disaster preparedness, rescue, recovery and information sharing.
 The MapInfo® miAware™ Developer Services Program enables developers to access the de facto standard for LBS application creation¾MapInfo’s miAware platform. miAware, based on patent-pending technology, is the premier platform for creating and delivering LBS. miAware offers developers the flexibility to mix and match location services in any combination to create innovative LBS applications. It provides a standards-based environment to speed application development; seamless integration with core MapInfo datasets and server technologies; and, multivendor interoperability to help ensure seamless support with wireless network infrastructures. Developers in this program also benefit from application integrity. It allows developers to test applications on MapInfo’s development server and access technical support to resolve development issues. This all leads to early, measurable return on investment.
Additionally, LBS offers excellent business opportunities for providers of application content. In particular, real-time event data—such as movie and concert times and locations; up-to-date traffic conditions and weather conditions; and, emergency response and public safety information—can be integrated into LBS. With MapInfo’s developer program, content providers team with application developers to design complete LBS offerings that have high value and high margins in the marketplace.
The miAware Developer Services Program offers comprehensive technical support; training and exposure to worldwide marketing and sales opportunities targeted to wireless operators and enterprise accounts. Participants in the developers services program have 24/7 access to a hosted server to develop, test and fine-tune their applications. The host server provides access to a complete miAware solution including postal and street data for Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States.
With the program, application possibilities include, but are not limited to¾mobile advertising to support m-commerce, traffic data and enterprise business applications, such as sales force automation, asset management, safety, real estate and risk analysis. As program members, developers can access a library of LBS applications or can create their own customized LBS application.
Developers or content providers with the vision and technical expertise to enter the LBS market, benefit from MapInfo’s proven success, excellence and expertise in location technologies. MapInfo also offers access to key enterprise and wireless operator customers and an open, customizable and scalable platform for development.
Technical Details About the miAware Developer Services Program
The program includes the miAware technical documentation package (miAware Service XML API and the Client Developer Java API documentation); miAware Client Package; Service Demo Package and the URL access to the hosted Web server to help developers get up and running quickly. The APIs provide access to server capabilities including, geocoding, reverse geocoding, find the nearest, find location, mapping and routing and profiling services.
- Geocode: turns address information into longitude/latitude to be mapped.
- Reverse geocode: returns address information associated with a given latitude/longitude. This information could include postal code, city and street intersections.
- Coordsys: provides the capability to transform GML geometries from one coordinate system to another.
- Cogo: provides geometric calculations and measurements, allowing the service to compute entertainment and distance values for geometry entities; return a straight-line distance between two points; and, verify a point position relative to a region.
- Route: allows turn-by-turn driving directions to be added to a Web-based application and calculates either the shortest distance or quickest timed route between any two points.
- Find the nearest: given a current location, returns nearby geographic features, such as restaurants, health centers and gas stations ranked by distance.
- Find location: provides searching functions for either street names, business names or cross street names for a given street name to help identify a geographical location.
- Mapping: provides the capability to create maps from data stored in a multitude of language or image formats.
- Mobile positioning: provides the current position of a mobile device, so location-relevant information can then be supplied.
- Profile: provides specific-user or-enterprise information, which may include a map profile or a personal profile.
These services employ a request and response model based on XML technology and HTTP protocol. The service requests and responses are XML documents governed by corresponding document type definitions (DTDs). Each service must reference a service-specific DTD file. The diagram below illustrates this process.
The most exciting services in demand today are focused around location. Don’t miss your chance to create some of the
market’s most innovative applications using MapInfo’s proven technology. To join this program, please visit
www.mapinfo.com/developers and register online.
miAware Home
Does your company have a solution, news, event, or scoop that WDN should know about?
Send details to editors@wirelessdevnet.com
|
|
|
