SMSNav.Me Gives You Local Directions Without a Data Connection
Have you ever gotten lost, without a map? Thankfully, you had your phone in your hand but – alas – no data connection because you got lost in the woods on your way to… Grandma’s house, probably! A similar situation happened to James Hitchcock and Moti Ferentz who, along with the rest o their team, developer the simple – yet essential travelling solution – SMSNav.Me, at last week’s TechCrunch Disrupt London Hackathon.
TechCrunch Disrupt is one of the world’s premium tech events. It’s so good that .Me sponsors it from time to time. While we focus more on the New York TechCrunch Disrupt, sending the best Southeastern European startup there each and every year from our Spark.Me conference in Budva, Hitchcock and Ferentz participated in the London edition’s hackathon. As part of the conference, the hackathon gives developers the chance to create a brand new solution (specifically, a neat, funny or smart hack) and that’s exactly what these two friends did – by solving their own (travelling) problem.
Because they were travelling a lot, Ferentz and Hitchcock found themselves in situations where they didn’t have a data connection and couldn’t use various map applications that required it, such as Google Maps. Their hackathon solution, SMSNav.Me, sends a text message containing the user’s GPS location, as well as the location that they want to go, while retrieving relevant directions on how to get there – in SMS form!
User-Friendly? SMSNav.Me Will Text You ‘Yes’
While this might make carriers a bit sad, it’s a fact that the GPS technology that you have in your phone doesn’t need an active data connection to use instructions sent through SMSNav.Me to get you to the place where you want to go.
While you can always use this solution from the messaging app you already have on your phone, its true power and user-friendliness comes from the official SMSNav.Me app that acts as an interpreter and provides a better interface to the directions you get.
Maps Are Only The Beginning
While SMSNav.Me is obviously already useful; it seems that the team behind the app won’t just be using the SMSNav.Me name or domain. As Ferentz pointed out to TechCrunch’s Matthew Lynley, they see its application in going beyond directions – with the end goal being compressing all sorts of data and sending it using text messages. While you’ll never be able to send the video this way, there are some possibilities for this type of solution the team is yet to discover.
With 76 remarkable team participating in the TechCrunch Disrupt London hackathon, there was a lot of competition for the title of the winner. While SMSNav.Me didn’t take the top place; it’s solution definitely impressed the judges. What the team behind SMSNav.Me needs to do is show if they can take an obviously usable concept and create a company around it – one that makes money from providing users with a way to send and receive various information without the use of a data connection.
Telecom + SMSNav.Me?
Interestingly enough, a potentially ideal partner would be a telecom, using SMSNav.Me’s technology to offset areas there just isn’t any access – or providing an easy way for tourists to try its service before opting in for a local SIM card. A telecom seems an even better partner when you consider that, as Ferentz told TechCrunch Disrupt’s judges, they’d have to pay every time they send some directions through SMS to a user.
Congrats to the SMSNav.Me for developing their solution in just under 24 hours and almost winning the grand prize of $5,000. SMSNav.Me will definitely be useful solutions for lots of travellers around the world that rely on good directions to arrive at their final destination safely!
