I’ve jumped on the bandwagon and for the past few months I have been developing an iPhone app. The app, called ‘Take Me There’, helps you discover all the stunning places around you. So whether visiting somewhere locally, or on holiday abroad—the app finds cool and beautiful locations you might otherwise never knew existed.
It essentially uses Flickr’s API and the iPhone’s GPS to find geolocated photos near your current location (or anywhere worldwide). And with an image pool of 150,000,000 (one-hundred-and-fifty-million) in it’s database—there certainly isn’t a shortage of great things to see.
I’ve learnt a heck of a lot in the process of development thus far. From the basics of drumming up a following on our Facebook page, through to more advanced stuff such as lat/long position cross-referencing (to work out how far locations are from your current one). Before development even began, I’d put together a hefty spec, which detailed all the various features and functions of the app along with supplementary wireframes and logic maps.
The app is still in development and probably will be for a long while yet—there’s so much to do. Before launch, I want it looking as polished as possible, but am very happy with the way it’s looking, feeling, and functioning so far.
I’ll be updating this blog in the coming weeks about the process and the hurdles that have arisen. Stuff such as how to go about validating 150 million photos, separating the good from the bad—and how I further plan to integrate a social layer on top of the app. In the meantime, check out the Take Me There website, and follow us on Twitter. Stay tuned for more!