Mobility
InKnowledge's mobility practice spans across a great many product categories, and incorporates industry best practices.
Native Mobile apps - Windows Phone 7, Android, iPhone
The team at InKnowledge has extensive knowledge in creating navtive mobile applications. So much so that we created the
Bing Maps Android SDK just so that we could give our
clients a choice in mapping platforms.
Why create a native mobile app?
With todays technology more and more people are using mobile phones as their primary computing device. As such making your webpage
or product available to mobile users is import. This can be done by creating a mobile friendly webpage, however some client find that
their users prefer to have a downloadable app that they can have on their phone all the time for easy access. If your application is
capable of running without an internet connection then making a native application is the best choice as your users will be able to use
your application when ever and where ever they are.
Windows Phone 7 Applications
Windows Phone 7 is the newest smart phone operating system on the market. By being new their are fewer applications in the application
market than in other mobile platform application markets which means your application will be easier to find by users. Windows Phone 7
applications are created using Silverlight or the XNA framework. XNA is primarily used for games where as Silverlight is often used for
user driven applications. Windows Phone 7 uses the Bing Maps Silverlight control by default which means that the same code created for
Silverlight Bing Maps applications for Web sites can easily be ported over to work on Windows Phone 7 thus saving you money and time.
Android Applications
The Android operating system has taken off recently and has now taken over iPhone as the most used mobile operating system on the market.
The primary mapping platform for Android devices is Google Maps however InKnowledge created and released to the public, via CodePlex the
Bing Maps Android SDK. By doing this, not only has InKNowledge given
users the ability to choose which mapping platform they use but they have also managed to create a framework that is much more customizable
and faster than the built in Google Maps api that exists in Android devices today.
iPhone Applications
iPhone devices have been on the market for a while and have been one of the driving forces in the the whole Application Market concept for
mobile devices. Being one of the most widely used mobile platforms on the market almost all clients looking to create mobile applications
want an iPhone version of their app. Until recently Google Maps was the only mapping platform available to iPhone developers. Microsoft
released an Bing Maps iOS which can be used to create native applications that use Bing Maps.
Augmented Reality for Mobile
What is Augmented Reality?
Augmented reality is one of the newest innovations in the mobile industry. It superimposes graphics, 3D models, audio and other useful
information in a user's mobile screen onto real time environments. Augmented reality systems superimpose graphics for every perspective
and adjust to every movement of the user's head and eyes.
Why Augmented Reality?
For store locators the traditional 2D map has been around for a while and hasn't changed that much over the years. Augmented Reality
turns the traditional store locator into a unique user experience which not only helps users find your locations but allows them to see
information about your locations simply by pointing their mobile device at your store fronts.
Augmented Reality also works well for fleet and asset tracking applications, venue feature locators, and customer office locators.
Layar Mobile Application
InKnowledge is capable of building out custom augmented reality applications for many of the newer mobile devices.
As an alternative to creating a custom application we also create plugin layers for the mobile application called Layar. In addition
to being an existing augmented reality platform it is also a portal of augmented reality layers. This allows your layer to be available
to users who already have Layar without them needing to install anything. This makes for a much larger initial client base. More
information Layar can be found here.