I’m here at DEMO Fall, where dozens of startups are presenting to a conference room full of attendees and press. One interesting company that presented today is Micello, a startup that’s looking to offer interactive maps at a more detailed level than what you’ll find on sites like Google Maps or MapQuest.
The idea behind Micello is simple: Google Maps is great for helping route cars places, but when it comes to navigating a large area with many points of interest by foot, it can fall short. So Micello offers a much more detailed perspective, outlining the stores that are in your vicinity. It works as you’d expect, with a look that’s similar to the maps you find inside of shopping malls. Even better: the site allows you to search for whatever product or service you’re looking for, with results appearing directly on the map.
For example, if you were looking to find a certain kind of item at a mall — say, some shoes — Micello would present a map of the various stores in the mall with the shoe stores highlighted in red. The service will allow anyone to create maps, and estimates that it takes around four hours of work to make a map for a large mall. The company isn’t limited itself to shopping centers either, with plans to offer support for college campuses, airports, convention centers, and theme parks. At launch Micello will offer 100 maps from around the Bay Area, with more coming every day.
Cool stuff. Just saw demo.
a new concept … how far it ill go
Once they hit the East coast, then I’ll pay attention. Sounds really useful, though.
Looks fairly similar to Chyngle from TC50
How far this can go, really? What if I would like to buy nike shoes, does it know if particular store actually has one or does it only know that store is selling shoes, if it knows brands sold, does it also know if are available or out of stock. There is a lot of maintenance effort required to keep information up to date.
After reading the headline, I thought it would be something like a blueprint for any building. That would be crazy (and illegal probably).
CTU seems to have it already …. don’t you watch 24?
Why isn’t TC covering DEMO more extensively?
VentureBeat covered TC50 heavily, which was nice for readers….
I must say that hopefully their product is much better than their website.
It was only a matter of time.
Would like to see some innovation in this space.
No backlink to DEMO
?
Very cool when there is cell coverage indoors.
Why Google didn’t make it yet?!
Does this patent cover it? http://www.pate...ee/Arup/7254031
TC is anti-anyone else when it comes to competing conferences, lame really when you consider new is new regardless. They could own it and drive traffic but pfffft eewwww its Demo is their perspective.
TC needs to do a better job of relating the latest startups to what already exists. In this case, there’s a serious incumbent in The Map Network, http://www.mapnetwork.com/ which is a startup acquired by Navteq a few years ago, now a wholly owned subsidiary of the largest map data provider in the world. Navteq and its new parent Nokia are Zvents investors, so I am quite familiar with The Map Network. This is a very interesting but very hard business. I wish Micello luck, but don’t believe that this is particularly new or different.
Micello is a cool idea, and if it works as good Google Maps then it could definitely be a hit. It might make malls less frightening. =)
Micello is a cool idea, and if it works as good Google Maps then it could definitely be a hit. It might make malls less frightening. =)
Micello is a cool idea, and if it works as good Google Maps then it could definitely be a hit. It might make malls less frightening. =)
Was an API announced as well?
Was an API announced as well?
There’s something in the iPhone store now called llama that does some of this. Not much out west but it’s got a lot of malls.
Wonderful Idea.
Best of luck for the Micello team:):) to scale quickly and impact the world:)
Please check Whatamap out: it has been working in this area for two years now, see whatamap.com.
All the best
Matti