uLocate Communications, Inc., award-winning publisher of location enabled mobile applications, today announced WHERE, the first mobile GPS widget platform for rapid development and publishing of location enabled wireless content and applications.
Currently available on select Sprint (NSYE: S) phones, WHERE Widgets allow consumers to quickly launch a personalized mobile experience that uses GPS location to put the people, places and things they look for at their fingertips. Consumers can add WHERE Widgets to their WHERE handset application by choosing from menus on the handset, or by dragging and dropping them from the Where.com website instantly to their phone.
“With the launch of WHERE and the WHERE Developer Program on the Sprint network, we make it possible for content owners to quickly develop wireless applications and publish them directly onto the handset – bringing it to consumers’ phones in days, not months,” said Walter Doyle, president and chief executive officer of uLocate. “WHERE provides the first true personalized location enabled mobile experience. For the WHERE user, getting new widget’s on their phone or customizing their application is as simple as drag and drop.”
WHERE Developer Program
For the first time, the same cutting-edge technology that underpins Helio Buddy Beacon and MapQuest Find Me is available for free to developers with the WHERE Developer Program. The WHERE Developer Program makes the industry’s first GPS-enabled widget platform available to third party content owners, providing the ability to create and publish WHERE Widgets. Content companies taking early advantage of the WHERE platform include the real estate data and information site Zillow and Eventful, the world’s largest collection of events.
“We’re thrilled to have the WHERE platform incorporate Zillow’s API,” said Mark Eamer, director of business development at Zillow. “Real estate is inherently local, and what better way to get real estate data and information than when you’re on-location? Imagine touring open houses and instantly getting Zestimates and historical trends, all from your GPS-enabled device – you can literally point and shoot.”
“Using WHERE to expand the Eventful service to mobile devices provides our community of users with a new way to discover, promote, share and create events near them,” said Jordan Glazier, CEO of Eventful. “It enables us to continue delivering innovative and compelling experiences to our users who can now access events on their handset, view maps and get directions in an easy, intuitive format.”
Independent developers are also employing the power of WHERE. Raj Singh, developer of the award-winning Pubwalk mashup (www.pubwalk.com), created a widget using WHERE to migrate his service to mobile experience.
“The WHERE application is fantastic,” said Raj Singh, creator of Pubwalk.com, “It allowed me to very quickly build a Pubwalk widget and launch it to my users. Normally, building this type of mobile application takes months. I’m definitely looking forward to building more widgets for WHERE.com users.”
The WHERE Developer Program uses the simple, yet powerful WHERE mark-up language and scripting to allow developers to write in languages such as PHP, Ruby, etc to create their application on J2ME and BREW handsets. All the tools, documentation, technologies and services needed to get started can be found at www.where.com/create.
About uLocate
uLocate Communications, Inc. (www.ulocate.com) is a privately held, venture backed leader in consumer location-based services headquartered in Framingham, Mass. uLocate powers consumer LBS applications for partners including MapQuest Find Me, Helio Buddy Beacon, Track-em, GlobalPet Finder and offers direct to consumer location-based services under its own brands including WHERE.
