![]() |
| MapmyIndia.com brings 500,000
Indian villages online |
When: 10/12/2006
4:43:33 AM
By Rajesh Barnwal
|
| Delhi-based CE Info Systems has launched MapmyIndia.com V-2007, an
online platform displaying digitised maps of
Indian cities, towns and villages. |
 |
The
interactive portal provides detailed maps of India at
different zoom levels and allows users to drag the maps
to explore adjoining areas not currently on the
screen.
MapmyIndia.com’s services include
location of any specific place -- along with the nearest
landmarks -- in a city, easy access to driving
directions from one location to another within the
country as well as during intra-city travel between two
points in a metropolitan city and last-mile directions
to any place in a city, reports Hindu.
According
to CE Info Systems, MapmyIndia.com's maps, available on
both Internet Explorer and Firefox web browsers, cover
500,000 Indian villages and 163 cities (with 75 per cent
detailing) across 1.7 million km
road-length.
MapmyIndia.com shows the route for
inter-city and intra-city directions on the map along
with the textual, turn-by-turn directions. With the
right-click option, users can mark-out their start and
destination points on the map to get directions.
| Rakesh Verma, managing director, CE Info
Systems, has said, “It is a manifestation of our
efforts to make MapmyIndia an accessible, usable
and valuable proposition for users.” |
 |
MapmyIndia.com
also enables a user to create his unique e-Location that
will enable others to spot the person's exact location
on the map. According to Verma, already more than 10,000
people have created e-Locations on MapmyIndia.com. While
talking about e-Location, Verma has said, “We believe
that as we need an email ID to communicate we need an
e-Location to locate ourselves.”
The interactive
website provides all its consumer services free of
charge on the Net. Then what’s the business model, you
ask? Although MapmyIndia.com’s services are free for the
site visitors, business houses and mobile phone users
need to pay in order to use its services.
MapmyIndia.com’s maps and directions are soon expected
to be available on GPRS-enabled mobile phones on a
subscription basis via mobile.mapmyindia.com.
MapmyIndia’s
services can help clients to display their location map
on their sites. This service might be particularly
helpful for banks to help their customers locate
branches and ATMs. Real estates classifieds websites can
also benefit from this service by enabling their users
to help locate the desired properties. MapmyIndia may
also help transporters in tracking their fleet movement
in real time.
MapmyIndia.com has already signed
up with clients such as Magicbricks.com, MakeMyTrip.com,
Yatra.com and Canara Bank to provide its services to
their customers. Election Commission of India also uses
MapmyIndia’s maps to help voters to locate their polling
booths, according to Rakesh Verma.
My
Take
While signing up for MapmyIndia.com I
felt that the online form could have provided a quick
facility to check if the desired user ID was available.
Also I found that the form didn’t accept user IDs having
more than 12 characters. This might be a limitation for
users wishing to choose their name as their user
ID.
The good part of MapmyIndia.com is that it’s
not forcing users to first sign-up and all its services
are free for the site visitors. Though, one needs to
register for creating his e-Location on
MapmyIndia.
While providing a direction between
two locations, the site only, as it appears, takes
distance into consideration. But at times one might need
to opt for a route which is less congested of traffic
than the one which is shortest in distance.
From
my experience of using MapmyIndia.com and creating an
e-Location for myself on the site I can say that it’s a
bit frustrating to wait for the digitised maps to load
on the site if the internet connection is not very fast.
But, at the same time, I must add, it’s still worth the
wait.
I’m of the impression that MapmyIndia may
really mint money on the mobile platform and not through
its enterprise services. Considering the usability of
the site, I can’t resist from wondering how much time it
will take for a company like Google, Yahoo or Microsoft
to acquire MapmyIndia.com!
Disclaimer: I
have received a wireless mini-mouse provided in the
Press Kit at the press conference organised by CE Info
Systems. |
Want To
Comment... |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
You may
subscribe to the news feeds by copying the below
displayed URL and pasting it into your RSS/XML
Feed Reader. RSS Tutorials http://www.alootechie.com/rss
/topstories.xml
| | |
|
|
 |
|
|
| |
