Esri, the world leader in geographic information systems, announced that Geoloqi, a powerful platform for next-generation location-based services, will be joining with Esri to form the Esri R&D Center—Portland.
The first new product offering will be a geocoding enhancement to the Geoloqi API that gives three new capabilities to developers: (1) the ability to create triggers based on physical addresses rather than map coordinates, (2) reverse geocoding, and (3) a MapKit alternative for iOS developers based on Esri maps.
The flexible, developer-focused nature of Geoloqi, combined with Esri’s strong foothold in the industry, will fulfill the growing needs of a field increasingly reliant on mobile technology.
Geoloqi’s powerful developer platform for mobile applications, combined with ArcGIS, Esri’s complete and scalable system for mapping and spatial analysis, will create more powerful geolocation and mapping tools for the development of web and mobile applications. The new technology stack will bring the strengths of ArcGIS to a wider audience without interrupting Geoloqi’s current product offering or services, giving developers the best of both worlds for the first time.
Geocoding enhancement and address-based search: Developers can now create a geotrigger rule by providing an address instead of latitude-longitude coordinates and search through places by address. For example, from a collection of museums, users can find “the closest museum to 500 Broadway, Portland” instead of “the closest museum to 45.5246, -122.6843.”
Maps: Esri and Geoloqi will offer a new mapping library powered by ArcGIS SDK for iOS. The release of the ArcGIS alternative to MapKit will give developers more options for maps in iOS 6 and beyond.
Reverse geocoding: The Geoloqi API now enriches place information with the city, state, and country of the coordinates. For example, when the Geoloqi API notifies an external server of a trigger, the readable place-names are sent as well. If someone enters a geotrigger anywhere in the world, the Geoloqi API now sends the city name in the request instead of just the coordinates.
“We chose Geoloqi because its technology is a perfect fit with the Esri tool stack,” says Jack Dangermond, president, Esri. “Geoloqi’s deep location capabilities and relationships with the developer community will allow us to develop more dynamic mobile and web applications for independent developers and large-scale enterprises alike. It’s a truly symbiotic union of teams and technology.”
“This is a big deal for the location industry,” says Amber Case, CEO of Geoloqi, who will become the director of the Esri R&D Center—Portland. “Not only will developers and enterprises have greater access to tools and capabilities, but we’ll be able to support larger markets than before and work very hard on providing the best experience for developers. With this merger, we get to build long-term value and solve real-world problems across many industries.”
Geoloqi is the first platform that enables rapid development of cross-platform, geography-based applications using a single API in any development language. It also provides specialized algorithms that help preserve battery life while location searches run in the background.
Enterprises and developers will be able to buy Geoloqi’s core features and geocoding service, powered by Esri, through the http://geoloqi.com website. See Geoloqi’s pricing page for details. In the future, all Geoloqi’s features and products will be available in the same form through ArcGIS Online with an improved and developer-friendly pricing model and feature set. Geoloqi technology and services will continue to be supported and updated as usual so developers and customers won’t experience shutdowns of the technology. For more information on Esri’s current ArcGIS offerings, visit esri.com.