Well, I have finally sent the engineering team home to get some sleep.   We have quadrupled our capacity to better handle the WHERE demand.  We are also posting an updated version on the App Store soon.  This will improve map rendering, and include a few optimizations to speed things up.  Existing users, hang tight and your copy of WHERE will be updated automatically.

Again we apologize for the slow performance that you may have experienced.  Please give WHERE on iPhone a try,  and as always, if you have any questions don’t hesitate to drop us a line at iphonesupport@where.com.

Best,

Jerry

Now you can get some of your favorite widgets from WHERE on your iPhone and iPod Touch! With widgets like Yelp, GasBuddy, Starbucks, Eventful, Buddy Beacon, and more, WHERE gives iPhone users the ability to discover nearby friends, places and things of interest. WHERE uses the location capabilities of the iPhone and iPod Touch to determine where you are, then finds what you’re looking for around your location. So now you can add the iPhone to the list of over 80 handsets that WHERE supports. Pretty cool, huh? Read more about it in our press release here.

Want to get WHERE on your iPhone? Of course you do. Just visit the brand new Apple App Store that just launched today! Download iTunes version 7.7 to access the Apple App Store. Once you have downloaded or upgraded to the new version, click here to be directly taken to the Apple App Store.

I think Kermit got it all wrong. It’s so easy to be green nowadays, especially when you have the WHERE app on your phone. WHERE has many widgets that can help you become more eco-friendly. Use the Yelp widget to find eco-friendly hotels and restaurants. Check out the EveryTrail widget for cool biking and hiking tours and forgo the sightseeing bus. We all do our best to ride our bikes and walk more, but sometimes you’ve got to drive to get where you’re going. Instead of spending the money on a gas-guzzling car, insurance, registration, tune-ups (the list goes on forever), you can sign up for a Zipcar membership.

A Zipcar lets you have the convenience of owning the car without all the hassles of actually owning one. All you have to do is go online, get a Zipcard, reserve one of hundreds of cars, hold your Zipcard to the car’s windshield, the doors unlock and it’s all yours! Reserve it for an hour, a day or however long you’d like. It’s simple to join, and even simpler to find a Zipcar with the Zipcar widget on WHERE.

Last week, the winners of the 2008 Spring WHERE Developer Contest were announced. The grand prize winner was Skymap, an application that uses GPS-enabled mobile devices to display the current sky at the user’s current location. The Skymap application was created by Mediated Spaces, Inc. The 3 runners-up were Mapicurious, a creative POI finder, Voicemap.mobi, a mobile and web-based system for leaving voice notes tied to a location, and DigOrDis, which lets consumers rate restaurants or businesses by giving them a thumbs up or down.

Skymap will receive a cash prize and a meeting with the AT&T team. The runners up will win cash prizes. All 4 winners became publicly available on multiple carriers via the WHERE platform.

The WHERE Developer Contest wrapped up about a month after the NAVTEQ LBS Challenge, in which 10 of hte 15 finalists and 3 of the 4 winners were created on the WHERE platform. Check out the winning applications here!

It seems like there is no end in site to these rising gas prices. The gas prices are rising above $3.50 a gallon, while oil climbs above $118 per barrel, making record high numbers today, according to the Associated Press. The prices are almost 66 cents higher than last year, beating the then-record of $3.23 last May. Sure, they say, gas prices should make people find more eco-friendly ways to get around but, what if we’re not all Lance Armstrongs? Your Huffy is in the shop and you haven’t donned a pair of rollerblades since Bush Sr. was in office. Sometimes you just have to use your car. But, how can you find cheap gas in your area? That’s where WHERE comes in.

WHERE is always thinking of ways to make our lives easier. They’ve already shown you how to use your GPS-enabled mobile phone to find just about anything you want with the touch of a few buttons, now they’ve even tackled this gas problem! Check out the GasBuddy widget. Just as easy to use as all of the other WHERE widgets, it locates the closest gas stations in your area and tells you the gas prices at each. It’ll even give you directions to each station. Driving a Mac truck around? GasBuddy can give you prices for diesel and premium too. WHERE helps you find the cheapest gas in your area so that you can try to avoid paying an arm and a leg to get where you need to go. Cheap and easy…sounds like a good deal to me.

This should come as absolutely no surprise to any of you who ever read this blog.  As you may, or may not know, I live in Montana right now and as such, we do not have Spring and Summer until it morphs into this one, small, fleeting season around June and July.  We shall call it Spummer.

That said, I woke up yesterday and there was enough sun for me to get properly sunburned on about 80% of my body.  Believe it.  So, this week, I chose the WHERE Weather Widget for the WHERE Widget of the Week because I’m terrified that snow will be coming again next weekend.  Logging into the WHERE Weather Widget will show me just how much I’ll be needing to bundle up in the days to come.

Yikes.  It is an oldie, but a goodie.  To me, the WHERE Weather Widget is an absolute staple.  I can’t deal without it.

You heard it right, the Buddy Beacon for the iPhone has officially been updated!   I just so happened to find other people talking about exactly this, and I couldn’t be happier about it.

According to one site that is mentioning this news:

“uLocate today announced that an iPhone specific version of its Buddy Beacon application is now available. With Buddy Beacon, iPhone users can easily share their location with friends, as well as see the locations of friends on the iPhone’s map application.” 

For all you iPhoner’s, this should make you pretty pleased.  If you haven’t tried it yet, well, Do.

In the event of an emergency, please refer to your cell phones for any and all relevant emergency procedures.  Wow, could that really be the case?  According to new reports, before too long, it will be.

That’s right friends, Emergency TEXT Messages are officially coming to these United States in the event of some crazy disaster of some sort.  According to the article I just read:

“The United States plans to create a national emergency alert system that utilizes text messages that will be delivered to mobile phones….In 2006, the United States passed the Warning Alert and Response Network Act, which requires upgrades to the nation’s emergency alert system. The law requires the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to develop ways to alert the public about emergencies.” 

Hopefully they don’t put all their eggs in one basket, as it were, with this emergency system because if a disaster is That bad, wouldn’t cell reception be a bit iffy anyways?  Hmmm…no doubt they will work the kinks out, and my thoughts are, if you can combine the Emergency Text system with WHERE’s GPS Widget system, you’ll really be onto something.  Imagine being able to send Emergency text messages pre-loaded with all the GPS information you need to get from wherever you Are, to wherever you need to BE at all times.  Imagine being able to rapidly locate your friends, family or lost people through GPS tracking widgets?  Not bad friends, Not bad at all.

Just thought in lieu of the WHERE Widget of the Week, I should show you some WHERE Awesomeness. I don’t know exactly what that means, but I do know that one way I can describe it is through this amazing screenshot of the WHERE front page from today.

How rad is it that 10 out of the 15 finalists in the Navteq LBS Challenge were built on the WHERE platform? Amazingly, stupendously, mind-bogglingly rad. Check out the screenshot for the pretty visual of the achievement. Me likes.

Just a friendly reminder if you actually forget to click the pretty picture, here’s where it leads.

It is not a stretch in any sense of the word to say that GPS is one of THE hottest technologies around these days.  The innovations being made in the industry (*cough*WHERE*cough*) coupled with the increasing availability are making devices and the service itself one of the most important new trends to inundate the market.  Start playing around with it and you’ll see exactly why.

Knowing this, what are you to do if you Do wish to jump into the market and get yourself either a GPS enabled cell phone, maybe say one that runs WHERE, or a portable GPS device for yourself of vehicle?  Well, I’m glad you asked.  You can either call around to every electronics store you can possibly think of, OR, read this handy little guide I found over at PC World that offers up some helpful and friendly tips to get you started.  Who doesn’t like helpful and friendly, I mean come on?

According to the article:

“Today’s navigation tool, the portable GPS device, can do things that paper maps are incapable of, such as automatically showing your precise location anywhere on the globe, providing precise turn-by-turn instructions on how to drive from any Point A to any Point B, identifying where the nearest gas and coffee outlets are, and warning you when traffic problems make a detour highly advisable. It’s like having a localized MapQuest right on your dashboard or in your pocket.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself!  Now, head over and read their advice, get some knowledge on the tech, and then heed this simple piece of advice from me…WHERE and our WHERE GPS Widgets allow you to do all the things portable GPS devices allow you to do, including finding those traffic detours, those coffee shops and those “Point A to any Point B” turn by turn directions…All from your cell phone.  Beyond rad friends.  Beyond rad.