Localscope, the popular location browser for the iPhone, in its latest version update v2.3, aggregates relevant geo tagged information about local places and landmarks from the free online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. The new version also integrates with Citysearch the popular yellow pages infobase provided by Citygrid enabling users to find restaurants, local businesses or services around them.
2nd May, 2012 - Mumbai, India - Cynapse announces the newest version of Localscope, v2.3, an update that highlights how location as a facet reveals relevant local information from conventional information systems. Localscope provides an un-matched local discovery experience by seamlessly tapping into geo tagged information from multiple local search engines, social networks and media sharing services and serving up unprecedented results around a location. With v2.3, Localscope adds 3 new source choices - Wikipedia, Citysearch and Google Local besides the already integrated sources - Google Places, Foursquare, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Panoramio, Flickr, Picasa, YouTube, Wikimapia, Google Local, Bing, Wikipedia, Citysearch, Fwix News and Fwix Reviews.
"While the new geo-app trend is to provide automated social serendipity; a fun concept, we believe that intuitive consumption of geo information is the biggest need of the user. With the smartphones in their hands, users are frequently sharing their discoveries in the form of check-ins, photos, videos, place reviews via different networks. But how does one put all of this shared knowledge to use? Thats where Localscope comes in. With Localscope, we provide a hyper-local search experience and aggregate geo specific info and media around a location from 16 diverse sources enabling the users to choose whats most relevant to them." said Romasha Roy Choudhury, Chief Evangelist at Cynapse.
Wikipedia, one of the newly integrated sources, the free online encyclopedia written and maintained by volunteers from all over the world is a remarkable source of information on countless number of places. It currently contains over 1.3 million pages linked to geographic coordinates. Localscope uses the GPS on the iPhone and meshes it with this large set of geo data from Wikipedia presenting relevant articles about places around a location.
Localscope v2.3 also integrates with Citysearch, a popular yellow pages service that covers more than 75,000 locations across the United States. The integration allows Localscope users living in or traveling to the United States to find local businesses in various categories from the online local city guide with editorial recommendations and user comments.
In the previous version release, we had introduced integration with Google Places and discontinued Google Local. While Google Places turned out to be a great source for reliable business listings for an area, users still craved for the bulk of location information that they were discovering with Google Local. On popular demand, Localscope v2.3 is bringing back Google Local along with Google Places as 2 separate sources. Users now independently use either of the sources to discover their locality or choose to disable either of them from the Source Manager screen.
Besides the above, Localscope v2.3 bundles new pre defined search terms, icons and updates to the Facebook integration. A full list of What's New in v2.3 is available on the App Store.
Pricing and availability
Localscope is available for US $1.99 (or equivalent amount in other currencies) exclusively on the App Store in the Navigation category. If you’re interested in reviewing Localscope, get in touch with us and we’ll gladly provide a promo code.
Download Localscope v2.3: http://j.mp/localscope
Blog Post: http://www.cynapse.com/blog/localscope-adds-worlds-largest-encyclopedia-wikipedia-local-guide-citysearch-google-local
Localscope Video: http://youtu.be/uGOWi1YoSfI
Localscope Integrated Services: http://www.cynapse.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/fullsize/photos/Integrated-Sources.png
Press kit: http://www.cynapse.com/sites/default/files/Press%20Kit.zip
About Cynapse
Headquartered in Mumbai, India, Cynapse invents software products that benefit fundamental aspects of everyday life. Its mission is to evolve the way people create, consume and communicate various forms of information. Cynapse is the creator of open source Enterprise 2.0 software Cyn.in, provider of the realtime collaboration software Sync.in and inventor of Localscope for the iOS and the WebOS platforms. Over 10,000 businesses and institutions and millions of users across the world benefit using Cynapse technology.
