Locago: available to the public with an open API

Idevio, a leading provider of web and mobile map solutions is today announcing the public launch of Locago, a free mobile map browser with an open interface to third party content and services. The simple and intuitive interface, much like a web browser, presents a clear picture of your surroundings, automatically activating the GPS and directions when needed.

Locago was first shown at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, in February 2008. After four months of testing, Locago is now being released to the public and is available for everyone to download, use and personalize.

Locago supplies a content-filled experience of your surroundings and allows you to search, explore and navigate on your mobile map. With Locago, you can browse your favorite content on the map; Wikipedia articles, Flickr images, Yellow pages and much more. Locago and its basic content is a free service for mobile consumers, ideal for applications such as real estate listings, travel guides, friend tracking and local news services.

Locago is both an end-application and a developer tool that enables mobile mash-ups. The open API allows developers to publish and share valuable content. With Locago, developers can rapidly create and deploy advanced location-based services on a wide range of mobile devices.

Locago has generated interest from a variety of different areas and has been selected as the platform for a number of commercial products including an advanced traveler information service for an upcoming world congress.

Locago offers branding opportunities and more advanced functionalities for commercial content providers, telecom operators and handset manufacturers. This enables Locago to increase product value, increase retention and leverage new sales channels through a low initial investment.

Locago is based on advanced, patented geospatial technology that enables an extraordinary user experience on limited devices. In order to increase performance and minimize data costs for the user, the map data is highly compressed and streamed to the device. The technology enables pre-loading of maps over vast areas into the memory card. In Locago, third party content and services are presented in separate layers that are dynamically loaded and configured, so that new sources and information can be provided without a need for software updates.

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