Category: Cell Phone Talk
APH has released Nearby explorer a GPS App with onboard maps for $79 in the US app store. anyone tried it? Thoughts compared to other GPS solutions? For that matter, what GPS solution is everyone using? Thanks and of course, Woof from my fuzzy son.
I use Blind Square personally. It's the only one I've tried, aside from Maps. Honestly, I usually find Maps sufficient if I have an address, but not so much if I'm just looking around. Blind Square seems pretty good for that. For me, it seems a bit more inaccurate in terms of distance. Could be I'm using it wrong however.
I also use BlindSquare. Mainly, since I know the city I live in really well, I use it to tell me upcoming cross streets. By "Really well" I mean 30 years kinda well. In a different city, I don't know what I'd use. But what's most important is for the software to tell me upcoming cross streets so I don't have to keep in mind each one I'm at.
I use Ariadne, which identifies streets and address numbers in my area far more accurately than Blind Square, which is often wildly incorrect, and Ariadne does so without the annoying little tones and extra sounds and extra voice of BlindSquare, but unfortunately it doesn't also give info about what businesses are nearby.
I have had this app on the dark side for sometime. APH "near byh explorer" does more then just tell you what's near by, it has a virtual map you can explore of roads, informs you of business that your passing, when to turn when your walking and more. What limits IOS has placed on the app do to IOS' sand boxing i'm not sure. Again I have it for the dark side not the fruty side.
I believe there was a demo of Nearby Explorer for iOS on ACB Radio Main Menu
yesterday at 9:00 PM eastern. I think they repeat every 4 hours for the first 24
hours, and it should eventually be available in the archive. I use Seeing Eye,
but I'd quite like a package that both announced cross streets and didn't require
a data connection. Unfortunately Nearby Explorer only comes with US and
Canadian maps at the minute.
Mr. Fly, question: could you share what the differences between the dark version and the fruit version of the app are? Are there features that haven't been ported to iOS yet? also, has anyone tried the tracking with heading feature on Apple maps with voiceover? It's sorta blind squarish. I'm really hoping they will work on this and clean up the feature a bit because it can be very useful to those who don't want to buy a third party app for doing that. Woof!
My downside with Ariadne as I understand it is that you have to keep your
screen unlocked in order to use it.
Maybe it's how I happen to use BlindSquare but I just set it and forget it, start
going and it announces upcoming streets soon enough for me. And my screen is
locked, it's doing everything in the background.
Now a virtual map would be nice, where you could set a pointer to an address
or location, then virtually walk around block by block and have it tell you the
streets in that area if you were unfamiliar.
Does Nearby Explorer do that?
BlindSquare will let you virtually look around in an area, but you can't just say,
"Go one block west" or something similar, to see what street is over there.
That's the kind of thing I'd really appreciate when in a different city, or even
parts of the city of Portland that I rarely if ever have the occasion to go to.
So does Nearby Explorer let you virtually travel around like that?
Because BlindSquare seems to let you take a destination and virtually set
yourself down there, but not move around block by block.
I've actually never tried using turn-by-turn directions. Ironically, I used to hate
it when I was a kid, if an instructor gave me "turn left, then turn right, then this
then that." Mobility people never really did that, they tended to always give you
a mental map of the area. But other kinds of "vision teachers" would do the
one-dimensional type stuff. Maybe my brain is just wired different from how
they expected it, I've no idea.
Right, wrong or indifferent, it's served me for getting my ass around places. So
that's why I'd use an app that could let me virtually look around in an unfamiliar
area. And also why I mainly use BlindSquare just to tell me what street corner
I'm at, either as a one-off if I spaced out, or ongoing if I set it to start when I
took off and my mind was gonna be busy doing something other than keeping
track of how far I'd gone.
I'm with Leo on this one. I'd love something like that.
Hi Leo. Yes Nearby Explorer lets you move around in the way you want to. You
can hit the button for the direction you want to move, and it advances you 20
yards in that direction speaking information relative to where you now are
having pressed the button. This includes things like new and upcoming
intersections, points of interest etc.
Very cool. Not sure I want to spring $100 right now but still. Very cool.
LeoGuardian at least for the Android version there is "Nearby Explorer Online" which requires
an internet connection (because you can't download the maps) but is 100% free. I just
downloaded this a few days ago and it can tell you what direction and speed you are going,
streets you're crossing, addresses, businesses nearby, and a lot of other useful things.