Bing UK is launching the GetMeThere app, a London travel helper, which is available today on Windows Phone for free.
GetMeThere is the only app to make use of Bing maps and the London Underground live updates together, so there’s no need to flick from app to app to get from A to B.
For any tourist, travelling through London can be daunting when you’re standing in an unfamiliar city with no tube station in sight. Even if you’re a seasoned commuter and there’s a service interruption, it’s great to have that re-assurance in your pocket to know you’re heading in the right direction.
From door-to-door, GetMeThere can help you throughout the whole journey by locating the nearest tube stations to walk to, showing the best underground lines to use avoiding any delays, and highlighting where to change lines. The app even provides bus information if there is a significant delay or diversion on the tube and it would be faster to take the bus.
Like any Windows Phone, ease of access to the right information is at its heart, with the live tile showing any alerts to current or favourite journeys.
Key Features
- Plan journeys using Bing maps and the London Underground network
- Full tube maps and live service updates
- Live departures and status updates by tube station
- Nearest tube stations (with map and walking directions)
- Set up favourite journeys with ‘live tile’ alerts on your home screen
- Weekend service updates
- Offline access to tube maps (great for when you are on the tube)
Windows Phone users already enjoy a deeply integrated Bing experience as every Windows Phone comes with a dedicated search button. With Bing search on Windows Phone, web searches give you what you’re most likely looking for – sites, local listings, images or even news – first.
For all non-Windows phone users, Bing has recently launched m.bing.com, which provides advanced smart search tools across multiple platforms, helping people make better decisions wherever they roam.
The m.bing.com homepage shows Bing’s inspiring daily image and hotspots, and from here users can now easily navigate to maps and directions, localised information, and image search.
One of the most popular mobile search tasks, finding maps and directions, is also improved with the addition of a new maps view that lets users see a list of places or directions and the corresponding map in a single view. The map seamlessly updates as you scroll through the list, so there’s no toggling back and forth. As a bonus, the new Bing London Journey Planner is now available on mobile providing point to point, visual planning for journeys by tube, bus and walking within Greater London.
In addition to these updates, Bing for mobile now integrates sharing features so that people can easily share images and local bar, restaurant details and more with friends by clicking on the ‘Share on Facebook’ option, meaning they don’t have to save pages or send them later.
All of these great updates are available for mobile devices that support HTML5 capable browsers, including all iPhone iOS’, Android (2.0 +) and RIM (6.0 +). Non-touch RIM devices that support RIM OS 6.0 and higher can also enjoy these new browsing additions.
Following the forthcoming Windows Phone OS update, codename ‘Mango’ this Fall 2011, Windows Phone users will also benefit from the following functionality:
- Internet Explorer 9. A browser based on the powerful IE9 and including support for HTLM5 and full hardware acceleration
- Local Scout – Provides hyper-local search results and recommends nearby restaurants, shopping and activities in an easy- to-use guide
- Bing on Windows Phone – More ways to search the Web, including Bing Vision, Music Search and Voice so it’s easy to discover and decide
- Quick Cards – When searching for a product, movie, event or place see a quick summary of relevant information, including related apps
To try Bing on HTML5 compatible internet browsers, please visit m.bing.com.