It's one of those ideas that's so simple you wonder why no one else has done it. (Well, perhaps someone has, but this is the first one that's come across our path at least). What's Halfway is a new website for finding good places to meet between one place and another.
Whether you're planning a meeting or want to catch up with friends, you just type in your location and their location and it comes up with a handy list of restaurants, hotels and other places to get together in between the two places.
Idea conception
"The idea came about chatting with some friends about how handy it would be to be able to find places meet halfway between us," explains its creator, Oli Anderson.
"After thrashing it out on a whiteboard I realised that not only would it work for people that want to meet up halfway but also for people who are driving somewhere and want to stop halfway. This led to creating the Journey Planner, with advanced options such as making more than one stop, or avoid motorways, go via places etc."
"I then started to think: what if there is more than two groups of people meeting up, we could potentially use the same algorithm to find places to meet in the middle of everyone and there came the concept of the Meeting Planner.
"This could have great potential for businesses to use for arranging sales meetings etc. When you select a venue, you can each person’s email address and the site will send each person their own directions to that venue."
Building the site
Anderson then worked with Rooster Creative Marketing to develop the concept into a brand and design and build the site.
The website is built in ASP .Net and JavaScript, and uses the Google Maps API to pull the venues from Google Places/Google MyBusiness.
"I have plans to develop various APIs to offer to partnering websites where they can incorporate our functionality and offer their users the search facility, such as travel sites etc," adds Anderson. "I also plan to team up with the likes of Booking.com or Expedia so that people can book venues straight from my site."
Have you seen an innovative use of the Google Maps API? Let us know in the comments!