Ortwin receives the award from Marco Benninghaus, Deutsche Telekom
Where To? scores again! This time, the app has been named “Best German iPhone App 2012“. The award is given by the iPhone Developer Conference in cooperation with Deutsche Telekom and the web & mobile developer magazine.
We feel honored and are delighted to receive this recognition as well as the prize of a Nokia Lumia 820 LTE and a € 100 Developer Garden voucher!
We also congratulate the other winners Stuffle and Vamos!
We’re happy to announce that with today’s update of Bosch Navigation (1.6), Where To? is now compatible. Available in seven different versions for western European countries, Bosch Navigation can be launched from Where To? for turn-by-turn voice directions. Until the end of the week the app is on sale for €20 off (€29.99 instead of €49.99).
In our last update unfortunately we introduced a bug that affected the TomTom and Navfree integration. We’ve now released a maintenance update of Where To? fixing these and a few other small issues.
Except this little faux-pas Where To? apparently struck a chord with iOS 6 users being affected by the deficiencies of Apple’s new Maps app. As Mel Martin from TUAW writes:
The app can’t cure all the issues with Apple Maps, but it certainly dramatically expands local search. Since I find Apple Maps to be a solid navigator in my part of Arizona, Where To? and Apple Maps are a good marriage.
Speaking of Maps app, we really appreciate Apple’s openness on the issue. We’re working hard to fill the gap with Where To? and have a lot of new stuff in the pipeline for you!
The new Maps app in iOS 6 received a lot of flack from the media and blogosphere. Users are complaining that information is incorrect, and points of interest (POIs) are missing. In iOS 6 Apple moves away from Google data and uses Yelp for business listings and reviews. While Yelp is nice for restaurants in the US, other categories and other regions such as Europe aren’t covered well. Since Google provides much more results all over the world in many different categories, we’re relying – amongst others – on proven Google search results.
Let’s say I’m searching for bank branches: Why should I care about a result in 22 km if I’m stumbling upon dozens of not-shown bank branches while driving there? To illustrate my point we’ve compared various search requests in “Maps” and Where To?. In almost all cases “Maps” shows fewer, more far away results:
We’re searching in Middletown, CT, a typical small US town. “Maps” finds two results, Where To? 13!
“Maps” only finds one result vs. 16 in Where To?.
The difference is not as frappant but still noticeable.
Searching for banks at our office location near Munich, Germany: The closest result in “Maps” is 22 km away – and not even a bank!
2 vs. 18 results. Note, ”Japonais“ is not the right name of the restaurant.
We’re searching for gas stations while on a highway in Italy, near Florence. “Maps” finds not a single result.
There are great improvements in iOS 6, too: The new always-crisp vector-based maps are a step forward in my opinion (although I personally dislike the low-contrast color scheme). And the Maps app learned to launch specialized apps from the App Store (“last mile navigation”).
Where To? is now one of them. It allows a local Where To? search at the chosen destination, displays reviews and speaks the direction and distance using VoiceOver for the visually impaired. Please note, the last mile navigation feature in “Maps” is available in routing mode under the (somewhat misleading) bus icon.
The Where To? 5.2 update also fully supports iOS 6 and the new iPhone 5 without letter boxing. The bigger screen is quite handy to display a larger part of the map or in Augmented Reality mode.
No matter if you’re living in Turkey or going on a trip to Istanbul: Where To? (Nereye?) now speaks Turkish and offers optimized search results for Turkey. My huge thanks go to Ozan Basaran and Kilichan Kaynak of AppBull, who did a great job with the Turkish localization. AppBull provides all the necessary help in marketing international apps mainly in Turkey, Caucasia, Middle East and Eastern Europe.
For our German users, we added support for public transport routing using the free “FahrInfo” series of apps: In Berlin, Munich, Stuttgart, Dresden and Constance the fastest connections including the walk to and from the station can be displayed. If needed, the suitable FahrInfo app can be installed right from within the app.
Go download the update from the App Store now. And, if you don’t mind, renew or post your rating – thanks!
In the newest Where To? update there’s something in for everyone:
iPod touch users will love to call businesses from Where To? using Skype without any copy & paste hassle. Just tap the call button and choose Skype. This requires Skype credit (affiliate link) and calling rates start from 2.3 ¢ per minute for standard prepaid accounts.
US and down-under users get support for three more navigation apps: MetroView Australia and New Zealand, Telenav, AT&T Navigator (use the Telenav icon in Where To?) are now supported as well.
Saving Where To? locations as address book contacts is great for often visited locations. Some users love that feature in order to use Siri to access these locations. In Where To? 5.1 we add a back link to each created contact that opens the Where To? app right to the page of the location. From there you can easily start a turn-by-turn navigation, view the menu etc.
More new features in Where To? 5.1:
Go grab the update from the App Store now (and don’t forget to rate again – thanks!).
In our recent Where To? 5.0 update, we introduced an API that lets other apps use Where To? to search for places nearby or at any given location.
Now, we’ve sighted the first two apps implementing the API in the wild: 
Launch Center Pro
Launch Center Pro by App Cubby allows to define shortcuts for various actions in all kinds of apps, system apps as well as apps from the App Store. For instance, you can launch Tweetbot right to the compose window or to view your DMs.
Adding a Where To? shortcut to Launch Center Pro is easy:
Where To? will automatically search for the specified query term at your current location. If you want to search at a particular custom location, you can append ”&location=x.xx,x.xx” to the predefined URL, where x.xx,x.xx is the latitude,longitude of the location.
Thanks to @drbarnard for the super-quick addition to Launch Center Pro!
Objective-Cologne
Objective-Cologne is the companion app for the upcoming Cocoa/Objective-C conference in Cologne. Besides the classic ingredients of a conference app (schedule, speaker introductions) it offers background information about the location.
Using the Where To? API, hotels, public transport stations, restaurants and bars in the surrounding of the conference venue can be searched. “Location Details” opens the conference venue itself in Where To? which comes in handy to get turn-by-turn driving directions using 3rd party navigation apps, to call them or to share the location via email, text or social networks.
The app automatically detects whether Where To? is installed and offers to download it from the App Store if not.
Btw: If you’re a Cocoa developer in Europe and have a free slot on Sept. 11-12, be sure to check out ObjCGN! I’ll hold a talk there as well, about “UIAppearance – possibilities and beyond”, and I’m sure it’s gonna be a lot of fun! Thanks to my friend & coworker @StuFFmc for the API integration!
Please feel free to support the Where To? API in your own app and let us know. We’ll continue to showcase well made integrations here.
Our FileMaker database where we import rankings and featured entries for each day and country
News from our little tool to monitor the App Store for featured entries: Thanks to Dominik Wagner from TheCodingMonkeys, the script to scrape App Store Featuring entries gained a noticeable speed bump. Using multi threading it now completes in 16 seconds, down from 36 seconds!
The script detects the following featured entries and prints them in one line per country:
To start the script you just need the iTunes ID of the app, the category and “iPhone” or “iPad” depending on which store you want to check:
./iTunesFeatured.pl 314785156 Navigation iPhone 09.08.2011 AE App Store: Home page, Staff Favourites Navigation: Home p… 09.08.2011 AR App Store: Home page, Staff Favourites Navigation: Home p… 09.08.2011 AT App Store: TOP STAGE, Home page Navigation: Home page
The output is structured as a tab-delimited text with columns for date, country, root level mentions and category mentions. This makes it easy to import the output into a spreadsheet, database or anything else.
Download iTunes FeaturedCheck on GitHub.
I’m delighted to present you another major Where To? update! We’ve been working on it for many months and I hope you’ll enjoy what’s new in it:
You’re now able to mark your favorite places. Be it the yummiest restaurant, the trustworthiest doctor or the most reliable car repair shop, by saving them as a favorite you can find those places later easily.
There are two ways to favorite a place: Right in the map using the Favorite button on the left side of the bubble and on the newly designed Details page that we’ll see in a minute.
Under the Favorites tab you can now choose from favorite categories and favorite places. Favorite places are sorted by distance as usual.
When using multiple Apple devices, favorites and settings are synced via iCloud: A favorite place, set on the iPhone, is automatically available on the iPod touch or another iPhone.
Have an advance peek on a restaurant’s menu to easily judge whether your favorite food is being served and whether the price range is acceptable! Or when waiting to be seated, you can already make the choice! Hundreds of thousands US restaurants are included.
The new toolbar on the bottom side contains the most often used actions like calling the phone number, adding to the address book, setting as a favorite and sharing to friends and family.
Speaking of sharing: when sharing the place via email or Facebook, the recipient can now open the place right within Where To? – handy to view all the details and to start a navigation right away!
Where To? was the first app of its kind to work together with turn-by-turn navigation apps and detects installed navigation apps on the user’s device. In this version we added “iGo primo”, “VZ Navigator” (US) and “Gokivo” (US) to support a total of 12 different apps now.
The suitable app can be selected via a nifty little popover that displays the supported apps for the current country. Apps that are not currently installed on the device can be downloaded from the App Store by tapping the green arrow button. Unneeded apps can be removed from Where To? (not from the device of course) in jiggle mode like on your home screen. Tapping the “Restore” button adds all removed icons again.
If you prefer one specific app, just tap “Set Preferred” in jiggle mode, then select your preferred app. This app will be started right away when long-tapping the directions button.
As a developer we love collaborating with other apps such as launching navigation apps for directions. But so far, Where To? wasn’t open to other developers in a similar way. That has changed in 5.0.
Where To? now can be launched from third party apps for various use cases:
All the details are available on our Where To? API documentation page. We’re curious what other developers will come up with and will highlight interesting apps in this blog! If you’re a developer and miss a certain API, please let us know!
As always there are many small changes and bug fixes (thanks to all of you who’ve reported them!) under the hood. I’d like to highlight just two of them:
We hope you’ll like the changes in Where To? 5.0 and download the update today! As always: Don’t forget to rate the app again since ratings are reset with every update. Thanks for your support!
In this update, we fixed an issue with auto-zooming that in many cases produced too distant results.
Further enhancements:
Where To? 4.1.1 is now available for download on the App Store.
As always: If you like Where To?, please rate it with every update – it helps us tremendously. 
Thanks!
We added integration with navigation apps Sygic, Waze, Navfree, Navmii and the Germany based Navigon Urban, in addition to the already available Navigon MobileNavigator, TomTom, MotionX GPS drive (HD) and Maps app.
More new features
The update also adds multiple pictures to many place listings, some of them zoomable to full size. Select places even include videos. If you’re in the US, Canada, the UK or Australia, take a look at the new State and National Parks (“National Trust Sites” in the UK) category featuring rich place results including Wikipedia links. – Speaking of links, the built-in homepage viewer can now be used in landscape mode!
We also improved the ratings and reviews section. So far, we’ve received great feedback about this feature and we’re excited about the thousands of reviews written so far! The new version displays even more reviews written by Google users.
iOS 4.0 or higher
Where To? 4.1 now requires iOS 4.0 or higher. This allows us to streamline the testing process and remove a lot of special cases for legacy devices. Our data shows us that only 2.4% are affected. If we omit devices that are upgradable to iOS 4.x we’re even down to 0.3% of all devices. A small price to pay that’ll be outweighed easily by the faster development process! So only if you’re on a first generation iPhone or iPod touch, you’ll have to stick with the last version of Where To? and should back it up in iTunes.
Everyone else is invited to grab the new version from the App Store!