CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iphonecocoa-touchgoogle-mapsmapkit
4thSpace
4thSpace

Reputation: 44352

Displaying nearby businesses in mapkit

Is it possible to display nearby businesses in mapkit? If not, how else can that be done?

Is there a way to display by category - restaurant, retail, museums?

Also, I don't think displaying traffic flow is available. Can anyone confirm?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 2832

Answers (4)

ezekielDFM
ezekielDFM

Reputation: 1977

I know this thread is kind of old, but i figured out a free alternative to do what you are looking for, more or less. You just nee to tap into a maps.google.com service and get a kml or JSON output. I used KML (XML) becuase i found the filesize to be consistently smaller. I wrote a 3 part series on my blog about how to do this for anyone that is interested.

http://www.zen-sign.com/finding-business-listings-and-displaying-with-mapkit-part-1/

http://www.zen-sign.com/finding-business-listings-and-displaying-with-mapkit-part-2/

http://www.zen-sign.com/finding-business-listings-and-displaying-with-mapkit-part-3/

Upvotes: 0

Saurabh G
Saurabh G

Reputation: 1875

Like DyingCactus said, it's not currently possible without using your own calls to one of the mapping service providers. There are options available, though.

One of them is CloudMade. They have a good iPhone library and support almost all of your requirements.

Check out the API at Cloudmade.com

Upvotes: 0

prakash
prakash

Reputation: 59719

This is an interesting and emerging business idea!

I live in Nordic region and there is an open Mashups especially for sweden. By open i mean, any one can request and get access to the content to find nearby Cafe / WiFi / Sushi restaurants etc..

BEGIN PLUG WARNING

Check my iphone application which fetches content from the mashups and display using MapKit!

END PLUG WARNING

And there is a commercial content provider called Info24 for nordic countries at the moment.

Upvotes: 1

user121301
user121301

Reputation:

The current version of MapKit does not support such features.

It's main capabilities currently are:

  • a scrollable/zoomable map
  • reverse geocoding (get the address for some given lat/long coordinates)
  • add annotations (pins) at a given lat/long
  • show phone's current location
  • show Standard, Satellite, or Hybrid view

To display nearby businesses, you would have to:

  • query a third-party for that information which would ideally return lat/long coordinates
  • add annotations to the map using the returned coordinates

Upvotes: 3

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