m-spatial Integrates its Spatial Platform into Vodafone Live
Vodafone live! poised to increase traffic and revenues with new ‘spatially enabled’ content services; m-spatial, the Mobile Spatial Intelligence specialist, will announce at 3GSM Congress the deployment of its Spatial Platform by Vodafone UK.
Cambridge UK, -/10 Feb, 2005 - The Wi-Fi Technology Forum/- UK-based m-spatial has integrated its Spatial Platform into Vodafone live!, which now has over 2.5 million customers in the UK. The Spatial Platform delivers a set of re-usable high level components that allow Vodafone live! content and application providers to quickly and easily ‘spatially enable’ their services.
‘Spatial enablement’ ensures that as a customer encounters a piece of content with an associated location, they are presented with a consistent portal-wide menu of options delivering spatial functions such as maps and directions, and personalisation features such as location favourites lists. For example, having identified a restaurant using the ‘Find & Seek’ service, a user can immediately request a map or directions with Vodafone live! ‘look and feel’, without having to visit another mapping service and re-enter the name of the restaurant.
“m-spatial has really brought Vodafone live!’s location services to life. It has ensured that customers are able to easily navigate themselves through a range of areas, without having to constantly know exactly where everything is placed on the menu.” commented Al Russell, Head of Content Services and Advanced Messaging, Vodafone UK. “It is a massive step forward for the portal.”
m-spatial CEO Andy Walker explained: “In the past content and application providers have struggled to ‘spatially enable’ their services. The Spatial Platform now makes it quick and simple for every content and application provider within Vodafone live! to deliver the same optimal user experience to their customers, whatever their mobile phone. This will result in more traffic to each spatially enabled service individually, and more importantly increased traffic for Vodafone live! as a whole.”
The Spatial Platform delivers a radical approach to the integration process by providing a set of coarse grained, task-oriented, interactive, spatial components accessed via a URL-based API. This ensures fast and simple implementation for content and application providers, minimising time to market even for those with no programming or geo-spatial expertise.
Steve Newton, m-spatial Chairman added: “One of Vodafone UK’s key requirements was to ensure that their users experience a consistent and connected journey through Vodafone live! In providing the ability to quickly and consistently ‘spatially enable’ multiple content services, the Spatial Platform will play a critical role in ensuring that Vodafone live! continues to provide a personalised overall user experience which is greater than the sum of the individual services within it.”
In addition to providing the same ‘made to measure’ maps and directions delivered by the m-spatial MapWay application suite, the Spatial Platform also offers Location Naming and Refinement (interpreting the results of a low accuracy location feed), Location Selection, Location Management (location favourites lists) and Location Messaging.
Both MapWay and the Spatial Platform are provided to Vodafone UK via m-spatial’s high availability managed service, ‘m-spatialHA’.
About m-spatial
Based in Cambridge, UK, m-spatial was formed in 2001, drawing together leading experts in the field of wireless data services and the analysis, management and delivery of geo-spatial data. Its customers include Vodafone, O2, Orange and T-mobile. Its Spatial Platform provides the ability to maximise revenues from all ‘location aware’ content i.e. content with a physical location. The ‘Spatial Driver’ capability provides MNOs with the opportunity to drive increased traffic to content services within a mobile portal. The ‘Spatial Enabler’ allows MNOs and consumer brands to deliver services offering uniquely compelling user interaction with ‘location aware’ content. Its MapWay application suite offers mobile network operators and consumer brands the opportunity to offer turn-key pedestrian navigation and mapping services to their customers. All of m-spatial’s products are compatible with the majority of mass-market mobile devices and are available via ‘m-spatialHA’, m-spatial’s high availability managed service.
For more information about m-spatial go to
http://www.m-spatial.com
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