Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Blackberry Maps work everywhere

NAC Geographic Products Inc. announced that NACMaps - a NAC enhancement for Blackberry Maps has been released and available on the Blackberry App World of Research In Motion (RIM), to make Blackberry Maps work everywhere in all its covered geographic areas no matter whether there are no street addresses such as in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and no matter whether there are no standard street addresses in English as in many Asian countries thanks to the power of Natural Area Code (NAC) which is able to efficiently and language independently specify any location and area in the world.

Although Blackberry Maps is the most comprehensive mobile map application in the world, providing locating, nearby business searching, turn-by-turn driving directions and navigating services in 67 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe, Middle East, Carribean and North America, it can specify locations only with street addresses which have many problems:

• Many countries such as UAE don't have street addresses, which makes users no way to specify destinations on the Driving Directions of Blackberry Maps even though it has a perfect street network database;

• Many countries and areas such as Hong Kong don't have standard street addresses in English, which makes Blackberry Maps frequently fail;

• More than 99% of locations in the world such as accidents don't have street addresses, which makes Blackberry Maps not work in all these locations;

• Street addresses are also full of variations, often duplicated in multiple locations, frequently changed and too new to be added in databases, which makes Blackberry Maps either fail to find or find wrong locations;

• Even street addresses are available, they are always very long and not efficient to input.

All these seriously restrict the uses of Blackberry Maps. Now NACMaps inserts two items to the menu of Blackberry Maps: NACLocating and NACRouting to allow users to specify any location with the Universal Address (i.e. eight or ten character NAC). The advantages of using Universal Addresses instead of street addresses to specify locations are:

• All locations including houses and buildings in the world have their own Universal Addresses;

• Universal Addresses are language independent and easy to input;

• Universal Addresses are highly efficient and 80% shorter than a typical street address;

• Universal Addresses are standard without variations;

• Universal Addresses never change without addresses outdated or too new to be found;
• Universal Addresses are mathematically equivalent to longitude/latitude, do not need geocoding and don't rely on any databases;

• Universal Addresses can be directly measured with GPS and pinpoited on all maps with Universal Map Grids;

Enhanced with the capabilities of Universal Addresses, Blackberry Maps now works in all its covered countries. Regardless the existence or completeness of street addresses, can easily specify any destination on the map, search its nearby businesses and get the driving directions to it.

Universal Addresses of any location in the world can be obtained on Free Geocoding Service and NAC Enhanced Google Maps. Universal Addresses of businesses can be found on the NAC Enhanced Google Local.

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