Webraska Enters North American Market With Personal Navigation API
LAS VEGAS--March 21, 2001--Webraska, the worldwide provider of wireless navigation services and technologies, enters the North American market with its Personal Navigation API(TM) (Application Programming Interface) at CTIA Global Wireless 2001, March 20-22, at the Sands Expo Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.Application developers and wireless carriers are invited to booth No. 8685 to speak to Webraska's technical staff and see live demonstrations of the Webraska Personal Navigation API(TM).
The Webraska Personal Navigation Application Programming Interface (API) enables application developers to integrate navigation, mapping and spatial searching functionality to all their Internet and mobile Internet (wireless) applications.
The Webraska Personal Navigation API provides access to a comprehensive library of navigation and mapping functions hosted on Webraska's Global Navigation Server (GNS). In essence, Webraska is the Personal Navigation ASP.
The functions available via the Webraska API are:
| -- | Geocoding: Address validation and conversion into latitude-longitude co-ordinates |
| -- | Reverse-geocoding: Conversion of precise latitude-longitude co-ordinates (as provided by GPS) into an address |
| -- | Positioning: Conversion of approximate latitude-longitude co-ordinates (as provided by network positioning technologies) into a range of possible addresses |
| -- | Mapping: Customized dynamic generation of maps in gif, bmp or wbmp format to developer-defined scale, zoom and size |
| -- | Routing: Optimized route and journey-time calculation for transportation by car, on foot or by public transportation |
| -- | Enhanced Spatial Searching (Ranking): Provision of ranked lists of potential destinations in terms of journey-time from departure point |
These functions enable businesses from bricks-and-mortar retail chains to Internet and WAP-based information services to improve the quality of their communication by being able to respond to requests such as:
-- Show me a map of where I am
-- Show me a map of my route
-- Show me where the three nearest French restaurants are
-- Provide me directions (by car, foot or public transportation)
and a map showing me the fastest route to my destination
Applications, such as location services, m-commerce, games, city guides, fleet management, mobile Extranet and yellow pages, can be launched quickly anywhere in North America, Europe and Asia.
Developers need only to integrate simple http requests into their applications to access the Webraska Global Navigation Server from any Internet-connected device. This makes it an easy, cost-effective and rapid way to integrate navigation and mapping into new and existing services.
By using the Personal Navigation API, developers are able to take advantage of Webraska's experience in developing multi-modal, multi-lingual, real-time navigation services. As Webraska manages all development and upgrading of the Global Navigation Server, developers benefit automatically from improvements to the Global Navigation Server, such as:
-- ongoing support of new device types and browsers
-- enrichment of the cartographic database to include additional
points of interest, new roads, public transport networks and
integration of real-time traffic data
-- support for new countries and languages
-- development of additional and improved functionality
Since all improvements to the GNS are backward compatible, developers will benefit from all such improvements without any modifications to their own source code.