Tag: location

eMapia Location Based Marketplace Launches Full Screen Mode

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eMapiaeMapia, the location based marketplace, which was previously reviewed here, and that integrates Google Maps technology to enable sellers (businesses or individuals) to add their items and link them to specific locations on the map, where they are available for sale (shop or person’s home), recently launched the possibility to view the site in Full Screen mode.

This feature gives users the ability to use the whole width of their screen to navigate through the world map and find products for sale near them; they can zoom by scrolling in and out.

By passing the cursor over the selected item, a little box shows providing a summary of that item’s details.

eMapia full screen mode

In this full Screen mode, visitors can also click on the “Show Items” link available in the site’s header to see all items within the current zoom level in the form of a left-side panel showing all the items’ thumbnails; allowing visitors to conveniently and quickly check out the available items.

FindWhere Expands Presence In MENA’s GPS Market

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FindWhereFindWhere, a pioneer and global leader of real-time GPS location tracking, announced a few days ago that its website is now fully available in Arabic at www.findwhere-me.com.

The new website arrives on the heels of FindWhere’s recently announced joint venture with Dubai-based I2TC. The partnership creates the Middle East’s leading location-based service provider.

FindWhere’s expanding presence in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region also includes the appointment of regional IT retail expert Dikran Tchablakian to the company’s Advisory Board. FindWhere will ratify several major agreements in the region over the coming weeks.

FindWhere’s Arabic website launched at Gitex — an annual information technology exhibition in Dubai. The new website will provide FindWhere’s MENA customers with secure, user friendly access to current and historical locations of their GPS tracked devices and mobile phones, including address, time and even speed. Services also include “on-the-move” notifications, panic alerts and notification of entry or exit of pre-determined geo-fences.

FindWhere customers can receive Arabic email and text alerts to their mobile phones with information on the location of tracked devices. Real-time location notifications are readily available to customers on demand as a text message.

# FindWhere ME

eMapia Location Based Marketplace Launched

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eMapiaA couple of days ago at the Swalif Think Day event in Dubai (UAE), a new interesting online service was launched, which is eMapia; brought to us by the same people behind Darrb, the community powered shipping and delivery service, previously reviewed here; eMapia aims to be a usable location based marketplace.

eMapia hopes to make shopping online an easier experience, integrating Google Maps technology to enable sellers (businesses or individuals) to add their items and link them to specific locations on the map, where they are available for sale (shop or person’s home).

It’s very much like the classifieds systems we’ve gotten used to where people post items they have for sale and set their own prices, and others get to contact them if they’re interesting in buying them from them. But eMapia tries another take at it through a new interface concept, focusing more on the location side of things, letting users zoom into specific areas to search for products in those areas or checking out all products being sold in their area.

It’s pretty obvious that the team behind eMapia and Darrb will slowly start building bridges between the two services as it’s clear that they’re a great match; after all, if someone finds something they’re interested in, and they want to buy it, they’ll certainly also want it delivered to them as cheaply as possible too, if the seller is not near enough for them.

eMapia screenshot

The interface is pretty simple and straightforward to use; there’s a big map that users can zoom to different locations with, in search of items available for sale in those areas; and there’s a list of available products on the left that gets refreshed automatically as locations change or as the user zooms in further.

Users can click through from the map or the list of products to view more details about the item and the seller. Seller and buyer rating functionalities haven’t been integrated yet, but they’re obviously really important features that should be integrated soon, just like they are in Darrb.

eMapia offers users the ability to add up to 5 items for free. To be able to add more items, users will have to upgrade to a premium member account, which they will be announcing soon.

# eMapia

Ayna Launches Beta Of Online Map Service for the Middle East & North Africa

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AynaA few days ago, Arab search engine Ayna launched a beta version of Ayna Maps, a service that provides interactive maps of places and businesses for all major Arab capitals in the Middle East and North Africa region.

Ayna is one of the first Arabic search engines in the region, and now aims to grow its search services by providing more types of information like its new street level map service covering 26 cities in 17 countries and presented in Arabic and English.

Ayna maps aims to provide detailed street level mapping that is not available through any other online service, including Google, Yahoo, and MapQuest; in order to give businesses and individuals alike the possibility to easily locate and add points of interest. As of the launch, Ayna Maps are preloaded with over fifty thousand searchable points of interest available in Arabic, English and French to meet the needs of local audiences.

Businesses will be able to mark their physical location on a map to guide their customers, and easily embed the marked map in any web site along with their contact details, such as name, address, phone, email, and a descriptive summary.

Doha Ayna Map

Cities covered by Ayna maps include: Beirut (Lebanon); Damascus (Syria); Baghdad (Iraq); Amman, Aqaba (Jordan); Riyadh, Jeddah, Mecca, Madina (Saudi Arabia); Kuwait City (Kuwait); Doha (Qatar); Manama (Bahrain); Dubai, Abu Dhabi (UAE); Muscat (Oman); Sanaa (Yemen); Cairo, Alexandria, Sharm El-Sheikh, Hurguda (Egypt); Khartoum (Sudan); Tripoli (Libya); Tunis (Tunisia); Algiers (Algeria); Rabat, Marrakech (Morocco).

Ayna Maps future releases include providing routing and directions, updating map data, and publishing submitted points of interest for businesses in the region. A mobile version of the map service will also be launched soon.

The idea is a very useful one and really needed in the region, and for an initial beta release it is pretty good; Hopefully future versions will have more detailed and revised maps, with more integrated points of interest.

# Ayna Maps

WeNear, Location Based Services Framework

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weNearWeNear is a new framework for location based services, which aims to help connect users with their interests.

With the widespread use of mobile phones and other mobile devices in the Arab world, weNear comes to enrich the mobile experience even more, beyond just making phone calls and sending sms messages, by providing a platform for location based social and business services.

As an example of one of the social uses, based on a user’s location, the service will be able to identify other weNear users that were marked as friends, and locate them on the map; making it a lot easier to find and reach them. Of course, a privacy option is built in to hide a user’s location whenever they want.

Through weNear, users will also be able to socially interact and communicate with other nearby users, announcing interest-based information and sending tagged messages which will be received by those whose interests match these tags.

When it comes to business uses, weNear users can receive immediate notifications with information about interesting nearby services, events or products; creating new chances for advertisers to connect with potential clients based on their location and their interests.

Another example Implementation is “Almotawef”, which is an application for Muslim pilgrims, that helps them find their relatives and groups during Hajj, walks them through the Hajj rituals and points them to the places they have to go to.

weNear was developed by Egyptian company eSpace.

# WeNear

Places.ae Dubai Location Based Directory Goes Mobile

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Places.aePlaces.ae, the Dubai location based directory, previously reviewed here, have taken their service one step further, officially launching the mobile version of their service at http://m.places.ae

The mobile version has been under development and test for a while now, and now that BlackBerry support has been integrated into it, it has been launched officially.

This mobile version also supports iPhone and Windows Mobile clients, with an even more optimized interface as their browsers and UI are better than those of the BlackBerry; as well as any mobile device that can read HTML pages.

Places.ae BlackBerry Home

However, if you have a BlackBerry equipped with GPS, it’s even easier to find places you’re looking for, as place.ae will use the information from the GPS satellites to know where you are and find a list of places that are closest to your current location.

If you click on one of the entries in the list, you will see a little static map of the place, and as phone numbers of the places are often detected, it’s easy to call a place to ask for other details or make a reservation if necessary.

For more details on how to use a GPS-enabled BlackBerry with Places.ae, you can check out the details and instructions on the Places.ae Blog.

weNear Launch Location Based Applications Competition

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weNearweNear, a mobile platform for location-based services and applications, developed by Egyptian company eSpace, just launched a location based applications competition today, which is open to students of The Computer Science Department at Alexandria University, Egypt.

The competition consists in building interesting location based applications using the weNear API. It starts today, July 1st, and the final submission date is August 31st.

Those interested in being part of the competition can go to the weNear competition announcement page to find details about the weNear architecture, documentation, and some initial client/server communication code in several programming languages to help them get started.

Contestants can then submit their applications at the weNear competition sub-site.

Should be interesting to see how this works out, and what different applications come out of it.

# weNear competition

Places.ae Release Places Answering Machine (PAM)

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Places.aePlaces.ae, the cool Dubai location based directory, previously reviewed here, have released a new interesting feature called “Places Answering Machine (PAM)”, which acts as an interface for Places.ae with other communication channels on the internet, thereby enabling users to ask Places.ae for places directly through these channels without having to visit the website.

They’ve currently launched with Google Talk and Twitter support, and more channels should be added soon.

For Google Talk users, all you have to do is add places.ae@gmail.com in your contact list then ask PAM to find you something by sending a message in the following format:
find me <something> in <area> (e.g. find me pizza in jumeirah).
You can also use a search term without an area, using find me <something>.

If you’re using Twitter, you’ll have to start following the user places_ae, and once it starts following you back, you can send it a direct message to search for a place:
d places_ae <something> in <area> (e.g. d places_ae pizza in jumeirah).

PAM is still in the beta stage, and more work is currently being put into it’s communication skills and the layout of the sent answers. But it’s still a really nice feature, worth checking out and using for quick searches.

# Places.ae

Places.ae, Dubai’s Location Based Directory

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Places.ae is one of those simple, small, but very useful services that we really wish we had more of all around the Arab world.

In short, and using their own words which I think say it best, places.ae is a location based directory for Dubai.
Integrating Google Maps, the website helps you find, positioned on a map, anything in Dubai by simply asking you what you are looking for, and the neighborhood you’re looking for it in; from businesses to restaurants to clubs to hospitals to any other place you would want to go to in Dubai.

The interface is very simple and really easy to use; you start typing what you’re searching for and the website helps by giving suggestions, and then it delivers a list of nearby places sorted by how far they are from the location you typed in.

You get to click on each one of these places to see it located on a map, find how other people who have been there rate it and read their comments on it.

Users can also add other places that they know of to the website, thereby giving the community the possibility to further enrich the service.

Places.ae currently only covers Dubai, but should be adding other emirates soon. The service is free, both for users and for businesses for the time being.

This very cool service is a product of the collaboration of code.ae and spinbits.

# Places.ae