If the verbosely titled iGPS POI Geolocations doesn ‘t discourage you outright from taking a look at this application, you might be pleasantly surprised with it ‘s simple, intuitive approach to storing your favorite GPS locations as points of interests. The application is dubbed as a travel oriented iPhone app by its developer, Li Gao, but I found it to be much more than that. Last week I took the app for a trial run for a couple of days to get a better feel for how I might benefit from using it.
An average workday for me involves lugging sampling equipment, meters, coolers, waders and all sorts of other supportive tech devices into the field. Any chance I get to consolidate the amount of gear I have to take with me is greatly appreciated.
INTRODUCTION: Upon launching the application you are prompted with an Introduction page that informs you what the main focus of the app is ”the recording of geolocations or “points of interest” (POI). You are then given an option of marking a new location, viewing a list of all your previously entered locations, or reading a short blurb from the developer regarding the purpose and summary of the app.
NEW LOCATION: This is the meat and potatoes of the app. There are a lot of options here that make it really easy to identify you location further than a simple GPS coordinate. These include naming your location, adding a note, taking a picture, or even choosing from a picture already in your camera roll. One limitation, though, is that you can only tag a location with one picture. Tapping on ‘New location ‘ button will prompt the app to record the decimal degree representation of your location, but you’re also free to alter the coordinates manually. I do wish there was the option of viewing the latitude and longitude in other formats, (primarily in degrees, minutes and seconds) because that is the format I generally use most often at work.
Once the location has been triangulated, you can tap on a button to ‘get address ‘, which basically identifies the city, state, and country your coordinates fall within. Now you have the option to view your location on an overlay of Google Maps, or obtain directions to or from your current location using your previously stored points of interest.
You can even choose to view your weather conditions, and forecast for your points of interest by tapping on a ‘show weather forecast ‘ that re-directs you to the mobile version of The Weather Channel.
LIST ALL MY LOCATIONS: By clicking on the this button you get a handy list of all your saved locations in the reverse order they were saved (last location saved is sent to the top of the list). From this screen you can also delete a location or add a new location ”saving you from going back to the home screen to achieve this task. This really comes in handy if you are quickly adding new locations. Another very useful tool that is a search bar at the top of the Locations page that allows you to search through all of your created sites. The search bar will auto-fill matching sites as you type, making it very convenient and easy to find the point of interest you are looking for.
Once you find the point of interest you are searching for, you can tap on it it to reveal all the stored information associated with this location. This will also include a thumbnail of a photo if you attached one to the location.
SHARE THIS LOCATION: The last attribute I wanted to make note of was a sharing feature that allows the user to share their locations with anyone who has an email address.
Contained within the email message is the title of the location, the date the point of interest was established, the latitude & longitude of the location, and a link to view the site on Google Maps. In addition to emailing the the location details, you can also email the directions to or from your current location to a point of interest. The summary will also include a handy estimate of the distance traveled in both kilometers and miles.
CLOSING: I went into this review not expecting to be ‘wowed ‘ by this application. At first glance it didn ‘t appear to be fancy and full of bells or whistles. At face value, iGps POI Geolocations seems like a simple, slightly overpriced, basic geo-location app. However, I was impressed by the description of what it claimed to do, and how I could integrate it into my own daily work routine. Surprisingly, in the end what I got in return was a very user friendly, powerful utility application that replaced my handheld GPS unit, my digital camera, and my notepad. With this application simplicity truly is freedom from complexity ”but in a useful obvious manner that is empowering for the user. I still think the $2.99 price tag is a little steep, though. However, after using the app for several days now, I can honestly say that I would still recommend iGpsPOI even with the current price tag.
Li Gao provided a promo code to Just Another iPhone Blog for the review of iGPS POI Geolocations. For further information regarding our site’s review policies, please see the “About” page.
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TAGS: iphone travel apps, navigation apps
