Posted by Ryan Johnson on 03 31, 2010

Where To? – GPS points of interest

Categories: Navigation, | 0 comments | |

There a bunch of “find me stuff to do” apps in the App Store, but one that you may not have seen that does a really nice job is Where To? – GPS points of interest. As you’d expect, all you have to do is tell the app what you’re in the mood for and based on your current location or a location that you specify, it’ll list out a slew of options for you. The main difference between this app and other navigation apps like it is how specific you can make your search, how the search results are returned, and what you can do with the search results once you’ve made up your mind where you’re going.

Other popular apps group together a dozen or so popular categories and for each one will display a list of results. Some allow you to drill down even further, but typically not to the degree that Where To? – GPS points of interest does. Created by FutureTap, this app has 11 top level categories that you can choose from, and once you choose one it displays a plethora of much more specific options for you to choose from. For example when you choose Food & Drink you can search by cuisine, all restaurants, or use the Surprise Me option (shake to find) that functions similar to Urbanspoon. Once you’ve made your selection Where To? – GPS points of interest fires up Google Maps with pins dropped in every available location, allowing you to easily pick the spot that’s most convenient for you and your friends. Once you decide on a location with a single touch you can save it to contacts, send it to friends via email or SMS, and can post it to Facebook or Twitter!

There are a couple other great features this app offers as well. At anytime you can mark certain places as your favorites so you have one touch access to them later, and whether you’ve saved something to favorites or not, all searches are saved under Recents. If you’ve got an iPhone 3G S then while in map view it displays what direction your facing, making it easier to decide on the most convenient place to go.

One thing’s for sure, Where To? – GPS points of interest is a really well put together and thought out app. It seems to display better results and more locations than other apps I’ve been using. I’m a big fan of the fact that it displays results in map view instead of a list view. Living in the Washington, D.C. area I typically like to find places close to metro or close to roads that are convenient for me. Having results displayed directly in map view allows me to see nearby metro locations, intersections, and interstates for multiple locations at once and not just one location at a time.

The only knock I have against this app, which it’s a small one, is that at times it can take a little while (a few extra seconds) for it to display “all” of the pins in map view. Sometimes it’ll just display a handful, but if you give it a little bit it’ll display more and more locations. Aside from that Where To? – GPS points of interest is pretty much flawless and without a doubt is an app worth owning.

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