Google Enterprise has launched a new tool to spatially geographically coordinate your employees. It’s simple concept that is used for ages all around the world for example to dispatch the closest cab the client. What is actually cool about it that it’s integrated with Google Enterprise Maps and Earth, and it comes with an API that can integrate with any of your existing systems. Google says any business can sign up for around $15 per employee which is not bad at all. What might be bad is that you are actually tracking your mobile your force, so… Good-bye privacy!
Google gives this example on their blog: “Imagine you are a call center operator at an electric utility company. A call comes in reporting a downed power line in one of the northern suburbs of your city, and an entire neighbourhood is without power. You need to quickly dispatch one of your line repairers to the site, which is almost an hour away. To save time and get the power back up quickly, you want to know which line repairers are already in the area and send them the relevant information about the job.”
The app is very simple (at least for now) you can share your real-time location, record location data, create teams, manage jobs and view past jobs and locations. It’s simple but it might be enough to make lunch breaks of your workforce 2 hours shorter;).
source: Google LatLong Blog, Engadget
#Business
Next article
In 2011 the end of November 2011 Google launched their latest mapping baby – Indoor Maps. It was really cool project and it made all the competitors work harder. At the beginning Google launched indoor service with 60 locations in US and 50 in Japan. But what made it different from other indoor positioning and mapping services was that Google figured out that positioning technology is not the most important parts of that system. Even bigger problem is lack of maps. You don’t need your indoor position when you cannot reference it on the map.
Smart idea
Google solved that problem by inviting business owners to upload their floor plans into the Google Map Service and they’ve launched a special Android app to help business owners to calibrate their maps with Wi-Fi signals for the indoor positing. It was a very smart idea because half a year later IndoorLBS reports that Google has already almost 10 000 venues mapped and they are launching their service in Europe starting from several location in UK.
What it means?
I’ve been writing about it a lot of times already but let me highlight it one more time. Google Maps have totally changed the way how people think in a spatial way. It made people geographically aware. More and more users saw the value of adding the geographic layer two their everyday lives. Of course it sounds a little bit like simplification and banality but when you get deeper into it, its truth. Google, because of its scale has a unique power to make us used to its products in this way that maybe in couple of year you will not imagine searching for product in a supermarket. Google will tell you exactly where it is.
source: IndoorLBS, Google Lat-Long Blog
