Visual Map is designed to help users explore nearby places or routes by visually navigating location-aware maps. Places are grouped into categories such as Food and Drink, Entertainment, Education, etc. Visual Map application distinguishes itself from existing navigation applications because it allows the user to narrow down criteria without having to know the name of a business. For instance if the user wants to grab vegetarian cuisine near their workplace but does not know of any strictly vegetarian restaurants, they can select the “Food and Drink” category and the “Vegetarian” sub category and receive locations displayed as pins on a map of their current location. This allows greater choice for the user who may not be familiar with local shops. It also is a good tool to promote smaller businesses that are not well known.
Features:
- Explore nearby locations visually (search by touch, not typing, for great usability)
- Multi-language support
- Location detail is showed on map with content: location description, address – phone Number, Image
- Get current location from built-in GPS
- Suggest shortest route from user location or between locations: directions shown visually on map, direction text guide included in list-form
- Search and explore locations by closest distance or best rated
- Group locations by layer (Food and Drink, Entertainment, Education, etc.)
- Keeps favorite locations and history of locations viewed
- Technologies: location-based services, bing map, google place API, google detail API, google direction API, web-services, JSON,XML parser, localization, multi-threading, local database