ViewRanger strengthens its location aware publishing platform for Outdoor Authors, Guide Publishers, and Tourism Organizations

Augmentra, the company behind the ViewRanger outdoors GPS navigation app, has released new tools on its location aware mobile publishing platform that make it simple for any trail-guide content owner to publish and promote interactive guides to smartphone users.

The publishing platform adds to the company’s online community and trip planning website (My.ViewRanger.com), which the company launched earlier this year. The ViewRanger platform can now be used by trail-guide owners around the world to publish content via smartphones and tablets, and to showcase and promote it within their own websites, blogs, and Facebook sites.

ViewRanger offers authors and owners of walking and biking guide books and trails a simple and controllable mechanism to get into mobile digital content publishing and to reach the growing audience of outdoor enthusiasts with smartphones. Publishers such as The AA, CycleCityGuides, OutdoorNI, Shropshire Cycle, Walkhighlands, and Walkingworld, are already using the ViewRanger platform to deliver fully branded, IPR protected, monetised trail guides.

Importantly for content owners, the platform allows the author or brand owner to faithfully present their trail concept, with written navigation and interpretation information, imagery, even audio and video clips triggered by GPS location, putting it at the forefront of location aware digital publishing. Content owners can deliver free trail guides, or can choose a price point to sell premium trail guides. When premium guides are delivered to a consumer, a simple revenue-share agreement is used between Augmentra and the content owner.

The newly released tools includes a range of web “widgets” for content owners to embed in their own website to showcase and promote their content to their visitors. There are three widgets available that can be easily added to a content owner’s website providing visibility of an individual route, a portfolio of routes or a content publisher’s brand profile.

1. The route widget - ideal for showcasing and promoting a specific route.

2. The brand portfolio map search widget - enables the content owner to add a dynamic map displaying all their routes.



3. Or an accommodation owner or other organization to show the range of routes that are available in their local area

4. The brand profile widget – allows a content owner to share their publisher profile and all their content via the My.ViewRanger.com community site.



Craig Wareham, CEO, said “Alongside our popular ViewRanger navigation app and our My.ViewRanger social networking site for outdoor enthusiasts, we are now creating an easy but powerful publishing channel to make it simple for publishers, authors, and tourism organizations worldwide to deliver dynamic and exciting trail-guides. We are also enabling a dialogue between consumer and publisher – a publisher can see comments and ratings left by outdoor enthusiasts who have tried their trail guides, and publishers can understand more about and communicate with the consumers who have affiliated themselves with the publisher or their content.”

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About ViewRanger GPS

Augmentra Ltd is the Cambridge UK based Angel funded software development company behind ViewRanger, the award winning mobile app, which delivers Mapping, Navigation, GPS- enabled guides & route content and Location Sharing to anyone, worldwide, who wants to get more from their time in the Great Outdoors.

The App runs on a massive range of smartphones and devices that use the Apple iOS (iPhone/iPad), Android, or Symbian OS and works virtually anywhere in the world using web based mapping, which can be cached for off-line use. Additionally, it can upgraded to run premium topographic map data like Ordnance Survey maps in Great Britain, for a growing number of countries, including Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Holland, Ireland, parts of Italy, Norway, New Zealand, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland & USA. A testament to the App’s accuracy and reliability is the fact that it is today used by almost 50% of Search & Rescue teams in England & Wales.

The ViewRanger App is complemented by a web portal for route planning, account control and community sharing at www.my.viewranger.com. The App is also a powerful GPS-enabled content publishing platform that allows Guidebook & Route owners, like The AA, Walking World, Cumbria Tourism and Cordee to deliver their content directly to a user’s smartphone.

www.viewranger.com

For more information contact: Ian Pond, Marketing Director at ViewRanger – mailto:[email protected]