Center’d Launches iPhone App
I just received a note from Center’d that the company has extended its online local search and discovery engine to the iPhone. The app, available starting today, carries the new categories of local discovery that were unique to the online site’s most recent upgrade (romantic, kid friendly, outdoor, etc.).
Like many of the mobile local search products we’re seeing on the iPhone and other smartphones, the discovery features are prominent. This represents a shift we’ll continue to see toward mobile apps that find stuff for you — based on the premise that people don’t want to do a lot of finger tapping. Along these lines, it utilizes the iPhone SDK’s spinning wheel features also seen on the popular Urbanspoon app.
Recent examples of this move toward mobile local recommendation and “discovery” engines include Aloqa and Geodelic, which were profiled in a recent TKG report. Next up we’ll profile mobilePeople, whose platform is based on many of these same concepts.
The next step in this evolutionary path will be augmented reality apps that utilize mobile devices’ camera view, accelerometers and compasses to plot users’ position relative to nearby points of interest. We’re already starting to see this from companies such as Layar, though there is lots of development to come.
In the meantime, check out the Center’d app here, and stay tuned for a more in-depth review.
