The power of location in your apps
I’ve been reading The App List in the Sunday Times over the last couple of weekends, and downloading lots of new apps to my iPhone, and have been struck by how many of them rely on location and/or use mapping. From dating, to shopping, to petrol price finders to magazines, there is an element of location involved in many of the latest apps.
We’re all becoming increasingly familiar with GI through our daily use of products and services that include these location functions. GI underpins so much of what we do and rely on, from online shopping to waste collections!
In the first 250 apps the Sunday Times published, around a third include location elements and a similar number include mapping as part of their apps. These aren’t the locations apps that are continuing to blossom in the social networking arena either – I’m not talking about Foursquare or Scavenger or GetGlue. It seems that whether we are looking for our nearest bargain, restaurant, real ale seller or wi-fi connection, we’re expecting to see both our location and theirs displayed on a map.
Then there are the apps that you would expect to have a location and mapping element – such as TomTom and RouteBuddy or Met Office Weather and AA Time Machine (looks at historical mapping).
There were also some more innovative apps with location underpinning them: A particular favourite of mine and ideal for a lover of lists and being organised, the Tasker app will plot your to-do-list on a map. Another app that stood out from the crowd for me was Locale. You can programme your phone to behave in different ways in different locations – such as always being on vibrate within your office.
Do you have any favourite apps that include location or mapping? Or have you come across an app that you were surprised to discover was reliant on location? Let us know on the blog.
If you’re a subscriber, you can also see the top 500 apps in the world compiled by the Sunday Times on their website.
Using GI and maps
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app list, apps, gi, location, route buddy, smartphones, sunday times, tomtom, wifi
Themocracy
Some nice apps that I wasn’t familar with. However, i’m fairly technical and use GPS location apps a lot but I’m not increasingly familiar with GI .. not even familiar. Have I missed something. mm… acronyms!
Ah yes, the dreaded acronyms. We do tend to assume a certain amount of geographical information (GI) knowledge for our blog. We’ll try to be more careful to write abbreviations and acronyms out in full for their first use from now on Steve.
….. and my first thought on seeing GI was glycaemic index lol