While navigation apps from one address to another have made our lives more efficient, Leon Schnell, a Pretoria-based entrepreneur, has taken this a step further with an easy-to-access and free-to-use website, OverHere.co.za.
During its latest upgrade, OverHere.co.za built in walking directions along with its existing driving directions to help users navigate from areas such as parking lots to venues and specific points of interest.
According to OverHere.co.za’s founder, Leon Schnell, since it launched in January this year, the website has enabled voters to find remote polling stations during the elections in May, attracted attention at industry conferences and helped ensure deliveries to mines run smoothly. In doing so, it has also given its diverse visitors a world-class alternative to sharing their location accurately.
OverHere.co.za uses the ‘mapcode’ system, an internationally-developed opensource software that has been available to the public since 2008. The Mapcode Foundation, headquartered in the Netherlands, has OverHere.co.za listed as a recommended website.
“One of mapcodes’ key strengths is that it doesn’t require road infrastructure to be relevant, so by adding walking directions powered by Google Maps, we now offer a free and intuitive start-to-finish solution: drive as close to your destination – wherever that might be – as you can, and walk the rest of the way with no guessing required,” explains Leon.
“A lot of focus has been invested into ensuring that OverHere.co.za’s interfaces are intuitive and streamlined for even first-time users, and this will now prove invaluable to holidaymakers coordinating travel plans deep into the bushveld, beaches or even simply our urban jungles as they travel to mapcodes with a minimum of fuss. When receiving a mapcode via a quick-share URL, our new ‘Preview Destination’ functionality (with satellite previews) will similarly give additional peace of mind before setting off,” says Leon.
For more information on mapcodes and OverHere.co.za go to www.overhere.co.za/about.
