p14 Outdoor Viewranger:SGBGolf_NEW_template 24/03/2009 09:38 Page 14
SGB Outdoor
ViewRanger
Digital mapping technology is becoming big business in the
outdoor industry as a whole technology savvy generation hit the
hills and don't want to get lost… ViewRanger works on a mobile
handset though, and could appeal to a whole new customer.
V
iewRanger joins the ranks of personal navigation tools hitting have done a project for the Hadrian’s Wall National Park, whereby as you
the outdoor scene, and it certainly appears to be every bit as walk along the trail, at certain locations there are video clips that will come
good as the competition – with a few features that help it to life. Features on what the Romans were doing, or features of the
stand out from the crowd, not least the fact that it runs on a mobile architecture or the landscape at or around that location. You can have very
phone. Craig Wareham, co-founder of Augmentra, creators of sophisticated guided trips and access to a massive library of those all from
ViewRanger, explains to SGB what makes this software solution your mobile phone. That route navigation functionality can be quite
stand apart. sophisticated.
We also do 3D panoramic viewpoint mapping. Again, we know your
SGB: Tell us a bit about ViewRanger, Craig… location. We are able to draw a picture representation of the landscape that
Craig Wareham: ViewRanger is a personal navigation tool designed for the is around your location. Then we are able to annotate things like the hills
outdoor activity and outdoor leisure market. Hill walkers, mountain bikers, and the lakes and other key landscape features around you. All of these
hot air balloonists…really anybody who participates in outdoor recreational annotations are active links. It’s very much a connected system.
activities and has a compatible mobile phone. We all carry our mobile
phones with us wherever we go, so it's convenient, and there are certain SGB: How do you sell the product?
aspects of being on the mobile phone platform that mean we can do extra CW: We sell effectively through three complementary channels. Our product
exciting things as well. is available through various mobile phone application stores, for example
ViewRanger is currently available on any of the N series Nokia handsets, Nokia's own. We also sell via retail, where we currently have a small
and the E series handsets that are becoming very popular. number, but we are looking for distributor arrangements to expand that.
For retail, we pre-install software along with the maps on a memory card, so
SGB: How is the mobile phone technology relevant? the consumer can walk into a store, take the memory card, push it straight
CW: A lot of these handsets come with a GPS receiver chip inside – the into the side of their handset and be using ViewRanger straight away. They
same kind of chipsets you would find in a dedicated Garmin device are haven’t got to load it via a PC, they haven’t got to do anything else. In the
being put into mobile phones. In fact, it is not just GPS chips, but store they can literally make the purchase, memory card in the phone, and
compasses, accelerometers and other sensors are being put into mobile there they are with an off-road SatNav system up and running. Finally,
phones. That means our software can geolocate itself by working out where there's our own web site, at www.viewranger.com, which links to our
the GPS satellites are, and therefore working out its longitude and latitude online sales area.
position on the surface of the earth.
We are than able to use that position in a number of ways. The most
basic way is to display your current location on an Ordnance Survey map so
you can see where you are on your phone screen over the Ordnance Survey
display.
ViewRanger is very much a full personal navigation toolset. For example,
whenever you go walking it will record your track, and can show you how
far you have been, and your elevation distance, how fast you went, your
maximum speed…
We are working with walkingworld.com and are currently engaging with
other partners as well. Using information from our partners about walking
routes, I can look at those details, decide which route is of most interest to
me, and download that direct to my phone. ViewRanger will then navigate
me along that route. Effectively it is a list of co-ordinates, or waypoints, and
ViewRanger will show that path on the map and navigate the user along
that path. This works locally wherever I am, and I don't even need to know
my own location because of the device geolocation.
Where we start to add more capability is that is not just a line on a map –
we can have text information, photographic information, audio and video
information associated with locations along that path. As an example, we
14 SGB OUTDOOR MARCH 2009
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