KEY POINTS:
If you're throwing a party this summer you'll have food and entertainment to think of, but Auckland mapping company Geosmart wants to help with sending out the invitations.
Geosmart, which provides mapping for Navman's in-car navigation systems, has developed Invite2Go, a web-based service that lets you send customised event invitations along with maps and directions for how to get to the event.
Your guests are sent an invitation via email, with the included map. Entering their location, they then get step-by-step instructions on how to get to the event and the route is tracked on the Geosmart map.
"From a consumer point of view we'd like to make them more aware of location-based services," said Geosmart's business development manager, Luigi Cappel.
Geosmart, a mapping and aerial photography company, is one of a handful of New Zealand companies adapting its mapping for web services.
Cappel said Geosmart had an edge because its people had driven every route in New Zealand, 94,000 kilometres of road, to make sure the mapping was accurate.
Up to four free invitations can be sent out at a time. For larger lists, Geosmart charges 40c per recipient for up to 50 invitations through to 15c per recipient for lists 10,000 strong.
You can top up your Invite2Go account by entering your credit card details through the website.
The revenue generating opportunities for Geosmart lie in the business sector. Events organisers, wedding planners, funeral directors and concert organisers are among the types of businesses Geosmart is targeting.
The hospitality industry is also in the company's sights.
"Your hotel could send you an email giving you directions from the airport or from your previous business meeting," said Cappel.
Invite2Go can be embedded as an API (application programming interface) into events management software suites so businesses don't have to use the Invite2Go web interface to send out mass invitations, but can do it from within their own software systems.
Like Google Maps and local mapping service ZoomIn, Invite2Go employs AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), a web-development method suited to websites that need constant updating.
"AJAX has rapidly become the favoured environment for mapping applications. Before you'd sit and wait for the whole screen to refresh. Now you don't even notice it refresh," said Cappel.
The next logical step, he said, was to make Invite2Go available on mobile phones. Geosmart already has a mapping service available through Vodafone Live.
Mobile GPS services are already available in the US through operators such as Sprint and Verizon and similar, if less accurate, services can be delivered using existing mobile network.
But tracking mobile users' whereabouts to pitch products and services to them raises "all sorts of privacy issues when you get into proximity-based marketing", said Cappel.
