Micello Indoor Maps v1.1 now available ...

v1.1 of Micello Indoor Maps became available in the iTunes AppStore earlier this morning.

In this version, we have integrated the compass (available on the iPhone 3GS) that will allow the indoor map to rotate and align the orientation of the map with the real world. On the picture to the left, the user was outside the "Sino" store at Santana Row (in San Jose) walking towards "Left Bank Brassiere". As I have mentioned before, we are able to add these innovations to the indoor maps because Micello's maps are accurate and ge0-coded.

In addition, this version has much smoother scrolling and panning of the maps and some performance improvements. So non-iPhone 3GS users will also benefit from upgrading to v1.1

Micello Indoor Maps unique features ...

In an earlier post, I introduced the Micello Indoor Maps application that is available at Apple's iTunes AppStore. I had mentioned a few of the unique features of the app that are not available in other applications that offer indoor maps. Here, I will talk about a few more unique features of Micello's maps.

Yesterday was Valentine's Day. Outside of the Holiday Season (Thanksgiving and Christmas), this day is one of the biggest shopping days in the year. Micello celebrated Valentine's Day by applying a special color theme to its maps. The screen shot to the left shows the King of Prussia Mall in Pennsylvania. It shows the stores that are highlighted from a search result for "Shoes" (Nordstorm, American Eagle Outfitters, Forever 21, Wet Seal). It also shows "The North Face" as a selected store. Finally, it shows Ralph Lauren and Tiffany & Co. as favorite stores. Notice the stair icon is highlighted in Blue. This indicates that this is a 2-story mall and there are search results in other floors too.

Another unique feature in Micello's Maps is the ability to provide a "best fit" of the store name within the store outline. When the map is zoomed out, the entity names are not displayed. As you start zooming in, the store names start appearing within the store outline in a manner that can be best fitted.

There are additional capabilities that we will unveil within the next few days. You will have to stay tuned for that ...

Micello Indoor Maps now available ...

The Micello Indoor Maps application is now available for download from the iTunes AppStore. We wanted to wait until v1.0 to provide a rich experience to our users. Once you download the app, you will agree that it was worth the wait.

We have started receiving some good reviews:

• ReadWriteWeb
• VentureBeat
• NextWeb
• MobileBehavior
• Sun Startup-of-the-day
• PrWeb (Press Release)

Recently when Google announced Nexus One, they showed navigation to IKEA. We wanted to show that you could go into IKEA with the Micello App. The idea was not to misrepresent that the Micello App is available on Android, but to inform that Micello is extending the navigation metaphor to "Go Inside". Here is the video:

Here are a few unique features in the App:

• The only app that provides your location on a map that is not an outdoor map. We are able to do this because our maps are more than just "pretty pictures". They are accurate and are geo-coded. In the above picture, the blue-dot indicates the user's position inside the community.
• The maps are personalized and interactive - so you can set your own favorites (the yellow entites above are this user's favorites)
• The maps provide iPod Touch users a rich experience by doing intelligent caching and not requiring a data connection all the time
• Multi-level communities are handled intuitively - with a "stair icon" to navigate between levels using a thumbnail sketch of the level

There are even more unique features. I will save that for the next post.

If you own and iPhone/iPod touch, download the app and give it a spin - even if there are no maps for communities in your neighborhood. You can experience the interface and then give us feedback on the maps that you would like to see become available.