Where to?

I've been patiently searching for a decent localizer app for my iPhone for a while. By localizer app, I mean a program that will tell you where the nearest [pick a point of interest] is from your current location. There is plenty of competition in this genre of app so I had to do a lot of research and after a few false starts, I think I've found my app.

The first one I tried (for free) was AroundMe. Not a terrible app for something that's free, but I found it extremely lacking in terms of what it was able to tell me about my closest services. I put it through its paces trying to find my nearby Shell gas stations and Tim Horton's coffee shops and it didn't fare well at all.

The next one I tried was the Yelp app for iPhone. Yelp is already a fairly well-known web site for the purpose of finding and rating restaurants and many other services, so I figured it would make a decent iPhone app. It's certainly better than AroundMe, but I still felt I could do better.

Then I came across Where To? It sells for $2.99 at the iTunes Apps Store, but I found it on sale weeks ago for $0.99. So I gave it a try after reading several reviews. This is the real deal. What I like is that you can get as specific as you want or not. Select Services > Gas stations > All brands > Shell. Now I'm looking at all the Shell gas stations nearby. In Google maps no less. Select the one you want, then get a route to get from where you are to the place you just chose.

Meeting a contact for lunch? Select the name of your contact and the map opens to their location, then continue in your search for the perfect..... steak house. If the site has a URL link in the Where To? database, you can then go directly to the web page in Safari, to say, check out the hours, or menu, or just call them. Then you can email the location you've picked to your contact.

This is what convergence is all about folks.