Speaking Sensis

A high-tech, high-powered mapping vehicle will be putting areas surrounding Cunnamulla and St George on the map this week…quite literally.

Little-known Queensland towns in this area will be some of the many new inclusions that Whereis® – Australia’s local mapping expert – will soon be adding to its extensive navigation map database of Australian cities, towns, landmarks and roads.

“The Whereis® four-wheel-drive has a large, round Trimble GPS receiver on the roof. It’s been causing a bit of a stir as it passes through towns in Queensland as people try to work out what’s going on,” Adrian Tout of Whereis® said.

“People get quite excited when they find out we’re mapping most of Queensland’s roads and landmarks so that locals, as well as visitors, have access to the most up-to-date map information on Queensland in their GPS device,” he said.

“While Queensland is one of Australia’s most popular tourist destinations you wouldn’t know how to get to a lot of areas unless you had local knowledge. With Whereis maps in your GPS device, it’s like taking someone who knows the lay-of-the-land with you – with useful details such as the condition of the road.”

“Our team on the road is making a big effort to mark points of interest for travelers – boat ramps, highway rest areas, spectacular look-outs, motels and van parks, public river access points are all detailed for travelers keen to go off the beaten track.”

The Whereis® car has logged more than 245,000 kilometres of mainland Australian roads to date this year, and is on-schedule to log a further 6,500 kilometres in Queensland during the next few months. The Whereis team will then convert the data into digital maps to be used in GPS units, the online mapping site whereis.com, various navigation apps for the iPhone and the Whereis® Navigator application, which is accessible on selected Telstra mobile phones.

Andrew Wood, part of the Whereis mapping team has been assigned to this important mission. He has mapped thousands of kilometers of road for Whereis and has teamed up with a skilled driver to map Queensland. “This is the best job in the world – I get paid to drive around one of Australia’s most beautiful states,” he said.

“Some of the maps people are using to navigate Queensland today are extremely old and many have simply been digitised from older printed maps – and large parts of back roads on maps are also inaccurate. We also taking into account the many changes that have been made over the years with the development of intersection upgrades on main roads and new estates,” Andrew said.

The two-man Whereis team has already mapped more than 30,000km in south-eastern Queensland including Wallangarra, Gatton, Esk, Kingaroy, Chinchilla and Gooniwindi.

Andrew counts seeing two kangaroos going head to head in the middle of the road as one of the most unusual things he’s seen during his travels to date and is looking forward to visiting the Gulf and Cape York to try his hand at Barramundi fishing.

The Whereis car began its Queensland adventure in Stanthorpe, mapping an old road that had been re-opened. Over the next few weeks, the car will be focusing on the areas surrounding Cunnamulla and St George with travelers and locals in mind.

Whereis® is now offering Australians three new ways to find their way around town – Whereis® fuel savings, Whereis® Navigator turn by turn instructions from the 1234 voice service and Whereis® Traffic.

Whereis® fuel savings
When it goes live on 17 August, Whereis® Fuel will take the guesswork out of finding cheap fuel.

The simple, new mobile application uses GPS data to help find the cheapest fuel nearby from Australia’s best source of fuel price information, MotorMouth.com.au. The fuel service adds to the existing suite of rich content already available through Whereis® Navigator which includes weather forecasts, traffic incident alerts and business searches via Yellow Pages®.

Mario Davoli, General Manager, Telstra Mobile Applications, said the Whereis® Navigator functionality means users can then opt to receive turn-by-turn, spoken directions from any location to help find the nearest and cheapest fuel supplier listed.

Sign up for a free, 7-day trial of Whereis® Navigator on compatible handsets* to take advantage of the full suite of GPS functions.

Easy as 1234
Dial 1234 on a Whereis® Navigator enabled handset and you can now receive turn-by turn spoken directions to Yellow™ and White Pages® listings anywhere across Australia.

Whereis® Navigator customers can now enjoy all the benefits of an in-car GPS via the new integrated mobile service.

Whereis® Navigator, Commercial Manager, Fred Curtis regards 1234 integration as a significant step towards seamless mobile navigation technology.

“The fact that it now only takes a quick phone call and single click on an SMS link for a Whereis® Navigator customer to be guided via spoken directions to one of thousands of locations across the country is a really exciting development,” he said

An added ‘send to a friend’ function allows for simple sharing of direction data via SMS.

Whereis® Traffic
Avoiding serious traffic jams and finding your way around major traffic incidents just got easier, with launch of Whereis® Navigator Traffic in Adelaide, Canberra and Perth.

The new feature launched initially in March in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane helps drivers choose the best route to their destination by re-directing them around high-impact traffic incidents.

Whereis® Navigator is available on a range of mobile handsets including a selection of Blackberry, iMate, Palm Treo, Samsung, HTC, Nokia and Sony Ericsson devices. For further information, customers can visit their local Telstra shop or dealer, www.telstra.com/navigator or call 13 22 00.

With more content and ‘draggy’ routes, Whereis.com is poised to make online mapping even easier.

Here’s a list of the new features to emerge from Sensis’ latest upgrade to the Whereis® site.

Single location search
The single address field now lets you search by address, suburb, region, postcode, state or a combination of these.

Related category advertising
More than 100,000 UBD® points of interest (POI) from 60 different categories have been moved into the site. Now, when a user searches for a POI, a relevant advertisement in the can appear in the hoverbox. This means people using the site are provided with even more relevant local content within the search.

Landmark navigation
Now you are able to get turn by turn directions using common landmarks along the way: landmarks like hospitals, shopping centres, petrol stations, or takeaway food franchises. Whereis® is using Yellow Pages® and UBD® data as landmarks, and there are plans to add more in the future.

Draggy route
Not only can users add a start and end point to a route by right clicking the mouse, but once the route is created, it can be dragged and changed. This functionality was requested by Whereis® users so they team is very pleased to launch this new feature.

If you’d like to see Landmark navigation and draggy routes in action, try this search.

Send to mobile and Send to GPS
Whereis.com also has increased the visibility of our ‘Send to’ features within POI hoverboxes. This makes it easier for consumers to send Yellow Pages® content and whereis.com directions to their mobile and GPS.

Easy ways to contact the Whereis® team
Finally, if you have any feedback about the Whereis® site, you can contact the Whereis® team in two convenient ways:

Through our contact page on the web site;

Or through the new Whereis® Twitter page.

These days Whereis® maps can be found online, on your mobile, in your car and Sensis will now send them to your mobile when you call 1234 or 12456! But for more than 10 years you’ve probably been accessing Whereis® maps on your portable GPS device. So it was great to see a recent review of top Australian GPS devices identify and praise Whereis® as the digital map provider powering the top seven ranked GPS units in Australia.

The Choice Magazine review – a trusted information source for Australian consumers – looked at 17 of the leading GPS devices in Australia and tested them for their May publication. The extensive review benchmarked leading brands such as TomTom, Garmin, Navman, Uniden, Mio and the recent ALDI model.

The testing involved selecting and routing to six random destinations in Sydney – a railway station, an airport, a university, a medical centre, a golf course and a sports complex – all starting from the same point. Travel times and distances were also measured between all 17 systems.

The review found Whereis® demonstrated superior quality in terms of mapping accuracy (notably in regional Australia) and was the data powering each of the first seven ranked devices.

So make sure you know who’s powering your GPS device before you buy one – maps do make a big difference.

Today, Sensis CEO Bruce Akhurst spoke at an American Chamber of Commerce luncheon on what he describes as The Age of Engagement.

Digital media isn’t merely cannibalising traditional media. It’s giving marketers new tools to work with and the ability to build deep, valuable relationships with customers.

The first presentation in this series looks at how local search is helping marketers support consumer purchase decisions in exciting new ways. And how the next generation of local search is being driven by the mobile phone.

The second presentation looks at social media. Be sure to check back as this presentation will be uploaded shortly.

Times might be tough in the media sector today, but there’s a lot about the future to be excited about.

This week, Bruce Akhurst, the CEO of Sensis, will be sharing his thoughts on the future in a two-part presentation: The Age of Engagement.

The first part of his speech – covering the rise of local search – will be delivered at an American Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Sydney this Thursday, 23 April.

And, in a departure from the norm, part two of this presentation, which covers the rise of social media will be delivered using – what else – social media!

So, pop back to the Speaking Sensis blog this Friday, 24 April. You’ll be able to view both of Bruce’s speeches.

This week Sensis and Telstra launched Whereis Navigator Traffic – a new service that will no doubt be music to the ears of Australian motorists.

Ever turned a corner only to find the traffic is banked up for kilometres, and it”’’s too late to change directions? Well, the new Whereis Navigator traffic service helps drivers choose the best route to their destination by re-directing them around high-impact traffic incidents.

So what does the launch of the new Whereis Navigator Traffic mean for me?

1. I can now avoid serious traffic jams and find my way around major traffic incidents more easily.
2. I can get to my destination more quickly
3. I don’t get stuck in traffic jams which means I don’t waste sitting in my car
4. I can keep my eyes on the road whilst I am automatically re-routed around high-impact traffic incidents, meaning a hassle-free driving experience.

So it appears this new feature has the ability to make my life easier, quicker and hassle free – now that’s my kind of thing!

The feeds of traffic information come from Australian Traffic Network (ATN) too, the same group that provide traffic reports to radio and television news stations daily via ABC and Austereo radio stations or on programs like Channel 7’s Sunrise.

The info is updated by ATN every 5 minutes and they collect data from a number of reliable sources- not just standard from road authorities but from helicopter feeds and from people like you and I.

Now that’s what I call handy. Available on selected Telstra GPS enabled phones. Whereis Navigator is like a GPS device in my pocket!

http://www.trafficnet.com.au

http://telstra.com.au/mobile/nextg/whereis_navigator.html