Wow! Are you serious, mobile phone maps for the Mall?!
I came across the article, “Finding Your Way Through the Mall or the Airport, With a Cellphone Map” in the New York Times, my most valued source media, social information. For your benefit quoted a lot of the article below and of course my comments slipped in there as well.
“A number of start-up companies are charting the interiors of shopping malls, convention centers and airports to keep mobile phone users from getting lost as they walk from the food court to the restroom. Some of their maps might even be able to locate cans of sardines in a sprawling grocery store.” “Aisle411, a mobile service that is set to start next month, is hoping to take the detail even further by allowing users to find individual products inside stores. Shoppers in a grocery store can search for “capers,” for instance, and then get a map to the appropriate aisle.”
I guess this would work, if you receive the information in a “jiffy” not peanut butter! But, the time you type in sardines or capers and wait for the results, you could probably just walk up to the courtesy counter, or ask an associate six aisles down from where you are standing, where sardines/capers are, right?!
“FastMall has a search engine to help users find stores on its maps. Enter “Banana Republic” and the service places a pin on the map to show the store’s location. Tap the “take me there” button and the service plots a route to the destination.” Now the take me to Banana Republic caught my fancy! Any mall I’m in, I would like to know if they have “a Banana there!”
“To find the nearest restroom, all users have to do is shake their phone.” What!!
“Most of the indoor mapping apps are free, like PointInside, FastMall and Micello, which work on the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. PointInside is also available for many Android phones.”
Stay tuned for maps “in outdoor destinations like theme parks, zoos and urban shopping districts. Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, Calif., is already available on FastMall, for instance.” Please read the rest of the article http://www.nytimes.com/ to find out what plans are being made for outdated maps!
