PointInside
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Point Inside is another worthwhile holiday shopping and travel tool
We recently looked at GateGuru, a handy tool to help you navigate around airports. Now I want to point out another good free travel tool, Point Inside, which combines mall maps and info on nearby stores. A new update also allows you to create a wish list. Select a store, and scan an item that you want on your list. The item will be added, and you can share your list on Facebook. The app produces nice airport maps with lists of stores, ATMs, location of baggage carousels, and parking locations. If you tap on a retail location at either an airport or a mall you'll get a phone number and a description of what they sell. There are a few negatives. Like GateGuru it doesn't have a complete list of airports in smaller towns. It also drops quite a lot of malls in my area, even some big outlet malls. Searching around the country showed the same issue. Some malls that have been long out of business are listed, while many current malls simply aren't there. The wish list is also a bit odd. You should be able to mail those lists, not just post them on Facebook. Point Inside is still a handy tool. It's worth adding to your iPhone if you plan to travel or if you expect to spend some time in bigger malls where you aren't familiar with the layout. %Gallery-109231%
Meijer deploys indoor positioning trial, helps you find the Morton Salt faster
Indoor positioning systems have long been a holy grail for malls and big-box retailers where labyrinthine aisles and massive floorplans that rival small towns often leave customers begging for mercy, but the obstacles to deploying them are many: you've got to create detailed maps for every facility where you want it to work, and you need some sort of system for locating users with a reasonable level of precision since GPS is out of the picture. Start-up Point Inside has been hard at work on IPS for some time now, figuring that modern stores and malls teeming with WiFi access points and reliable AGPS are good enough to make it work, and now they've hooked up with Midwestern superstore chain Meijer to trial a system in four Michigan locations that will let users locate "more than" 100,000 items in store along with facilities like bathrooms and customer service. Conveniently, these stores have some 26 WiFi nodes deployed, which helps triangulate users down to a reasonable level of precision -- though it's probably not going to be able to tell if you're standing in front of the Frosted Flakes or the Raisin Bran. It's a free download for iPhone and Android users, and if you're close to one of the trial stores, be sure to let us know how well it works. Follow the break for the full press release.
