Two months back, while I was wandering over US skies on Google Maps, I noticed few good add-ons, which should have got replicated in due time in India. The one, which I am talking about is ‘Live Traffic Updates’ on maps.
Taking the cue from Google, one year old Indian start-up LiveVana Innovations, a middle-ware & application service provider to MSPs (Mobile Service Provider), recently launched India’s first Live Traffic Service. The service is based on historical as well as real time traffic statistics and can be accessed via SMS, WAP Portal and Web. But after spending some time with the portal, I couldn’t hide my disappointment with the service.
There are many reasons to it. First, I tried with Opera & Firefox(Dolphin) on my Android device. Sadly, it took long time to load the page and finally when maps (Courtesy Mapabc, Europa Technologies) are loaded, I couldn’t locate Point ‘A’ & Point ‘B’ on them. Then I decided to try it with Google Chrome & IE 8 with Wi-Fi Connectivity on Laptop, but again I faced the same issue with little improvement on directions. Lastly, before closing down, I tried it with Opera with Wi-Fi, but it was a real challenge to load map and get the real time traffic information. My Android refused to budge at the end.
Undoubtedly, it’s a bold attempt by just one year old start-up in solving real world problem. If you ask me, there’s urgent need to bug-fix the service before launching it for prime-time. But I hope sooner or later, we will be in position to choose least congested roads of our daily itinerary, based on real time traffic info, based on either Google Maps or by some other service provider like Livevana Maps. The challenge lies in accessing and getting real time traffic updates of gridlocked Metro roads in India.
(Some other addons of Google Maps are quite interesting to use, like aerial imagery or rotatable maps, which aren’t yet released for prime usage. Developers or users may find it useful to use or even replicate in their applications. Check out above image for more details.)
