Micello Blog: Indoor Cartography

Stay in touch with Micello by following our blog as we cover a wide range of cartography and company topics.

Micello's Map Factory Expansion
Aug 14 2012

We are so excited to introduce you to our new space and the new faces at Micello's new office in Ahmedabad, India. Recently, our team of map makers transitioned to a much larger, “state of the art” working space, and welcomed new team members. Micello is dedicated to expanding our map coverage worldwide, and that means more space and more people! 

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The construction of the space started with a blank canvas. Once walls were torn down and we added a little paint, the space was furnished with all of the essential map making needs and viola, Micello's Ahmedabad (Abad) office is open for business. This new space features floor to ceiling windows, a friendly open work environment (and of course, air conditioning).  

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Micello's Ahmedabad office is where the magic happens. Commonly referred to as our "map factory", the Ahmedabad office is home to over 40 Micello employees consisting of Map Designers, Team Leaders, Administrative Professionals, Engineers, and we are growing quickly! Let’s meet some of the new faces!

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Esha Juneja is the HR Manager and Ishita Shah is the Office Manager for Micello, India. These two ladies keep the office running smoothly.  Showcasing their skills, experience and savvy; they are the back bone of day-to-day operations. Their efforts in office organization, scheduling and overall team management make the office function on a daily basis. 

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Surendra Deora and Kushboo Shah are Team Leaders for the Map Ops team at Micello, India. Team Leaders share their knowledge and skills as well as lead the team of map designers to make maps. 

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Divya Vyas and Dilip Patel serve as Micello Quality Specialist.  Micello has a dedicated team of quality specialists to maintain the high quality maps we are known for.  

You can meet all of the Micello team on our Team page. Also, check out our interns page, where you'll find shared experience from previous Micello interns. You can see all of new office and team photos on our Facebook page. 

Micello Goes to Stanford
Aug 9 2012

Back to school has never been so exciting!  Last week, Micello CEO Ankit Agarwal, had the opportunity to speak at Stanford.  Micello was invited by Professor Tom Kosnik to hold a lecture and discussion for two sessions of the E145 class.  

Class started with a music video to get everyone in the groove... shouldn't all classes begin this way?

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A few weeks prior to this discussion, the students were given a case study featuring all things Micello. The class was divided into teams of mock companies that worked together to form their start-up. Each group worked together, with the Micello case study to determine what choices they would make given the same scenerio Ankit faced while building his start-up Micello, from day one. The outcome was phenomenal! Everyone was on the edge of their seat waiting to find out if they had made the same decisions as Ankit.

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After each group discussed their decisions and defended their position, Ankit shared with group the actual decisions he made in the beginning and why. The majority of the class was on the same page, and even those that had disagreed, they stood by their decisions.  
 
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As for Ankit, could he be enrolling for classes next term? I think he will stick with maps, unless Stanford calls again.

Micello International Coverage
Aug 7 2012
The Micello, Inc. headquarters in Sunnyvale, California has had a few changes lately.  The office is now displaying flags that represent Micello maps coverage across the globe!   You have probably noticed our homepage banners on micello.com that feature our map coverage, and now, the Micello office displays the flags to go along with that count.  
 
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Have you ever wanted to plan your vacation shopping before you go, or find the closest bathroom to your airport terminal?  With thousands of indoor venue maps available, Micello makes it easy to find your way around shopping malls, airports, and casinos.  Currently, Micello maps are present in six countries across the globe, USA, Australia, Canada, Japan, Singapore,  and the United Kingdom.  
 
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Where are you going, where have you been, are you going back?  With Micello's expansive indoor venue maps coverage, you can find the maps you need around the places you'll be- and you can check them out before you go! These flags represent Micello's growing population of indoor venue maps.  Like a visual reminder of the "smart bar" on the Micello.com places page, each flag represents the places available in that country.  Don't see what you are looking for?  Request a map and Micello will alert you when it is ready! Stay tuned for more Micello office updates, and of course, more maps!  
 
 
 
 
 
 

snapp! by Sensewhere
Jul 26 2012

Sensewhere's new indoor location app, snapp! is now available for download from Google Play. Sensewhere, the world leader in hyper local and indoor positioning solutions has partnered with Micello in order to bring customers this awesomely accurate indoor positioning application. 

 
Snapp! combines senswhere's leading indoor positioning, and Micello maps along with social activity. This allows users to see their friends updates on the indoor venue map! Snapp! ties in with a variety of social networks including Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare. Check out the video below to learn more about snapp!

Micello's Social Places
Jul 25 2012
If you have visited any of our places pages recently you have probably noticed a lot of social activity.  Micello Places has gone social.  Our indoor venue maps are not only reliable and accurate, they let you know all of the social activity taking place around your map.  
 
Because there is such a high overlap of Micello's mapped venues and places where people love to broadcast social media, the idea of a 'Social Place Page' was conceived.  We wanted to know what people were thinking and sharing in the thousands of venues we have mapped, so we brought the idea to life.
 
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The Social Place Pages make use of several of the most powerful, and fun, features of the Micello Javascript SDK.  Several of the standard components of the map have been customized to enhance interactivity and incorporate data from third-party sources. Because Micello's maps are geo-accurate (representing their real world location in latitude and longitude), all that is needed to add points of interest to a map are their lat/lon coordinates. 
Beginning with the 'map pins' used to mark locations on the map, the Micello SDK was used to load custom pin graphics to represent the various data sources.  With intermediate Photoshop experience creating your own custom pins can be an easy way to add additional information to Micello maps.
 
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To make the most of all the multimedia and HTML based content that is shared in social media the behavior of the 'info window' was also customized.  With the help of the Javascript SDK, custom HTML info windows can be tied to various locations on the map. In the case of the Social Place Pages this was leveraged by using a small info window to indicate the location on the map while a larger window displays the full content of the social media post. 
 
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The 'Directory' tab below the map displays an interactive directory that can be helpful when trying to find a particular point of interest.  This is one of the more common (and practical) examples of using the Micello SDK.
 
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For more information on the Micello SDK, please visit our Developers page.  This is where you can find everything developers need from the Micello indoor mapping world. 
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Micello Partners with Sensewhere
Jul 24 2012

We're excited to announce that Micello has partnered with Sensewhere Ltd., the world leader in hyper-local and indoor positioning solutions.  What does this mean for Micello maps?  Users will continue to get the same high quality geo-accurate maps combined with Sensewhere's leading positioning technology to create an even greater indoor location based services experience.  
 
Both Micello and Sensewhere offer platforms and APIs to developers.  Combining these technologies is a showcase for developers looking to create applications and solutions using indoor venue maps and accurate positioning.  Check out some screenshots below of this winning combination.
 
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You can read the full press release on the Micello and Sensewhere partnership here.
 

Join the Big Brand Hackathon
Jun 15 2012
The Big Brand Hackathon is happening in San Francisco, June 16-18 at Madrone Studios. Micello will be on hand to answer questions about our Javascript API to help the hackers develop fun applications using indoor maps. 
 
Micello's Director of Customer Solutions, David Lo will be introducing Micello, and highlighting what Micello has to offer at the hackathon during the lightening talks at 10:45am..  What can you do with our Indoor Map API?  The Micello Javascript SDK offers many features including map controls, map layers, interaction features, customization, data integration and browser support.  With over 5,000 indoor venue maps, there is something for everyone!  Micello offers thousands of shopping mall maps in the USA, Canada, Australia and Singapore, over 100 airport maps, and several retail maps such as The Home Depot and Ikea.  Visit the Micello Big Brand Hackathon page for more information.  
 
The Big Brand hack recognizes developers as the New Creative Class for the mobile marketplace and puts them in front of the world’s most well-known consumer brands for two days as partners who can transform concepts into code and ideas into apps.  
What’s in it for you?  Hackers will be competing for more than 25K in cash and 20K in prizes. Brand giants Kraft Foods & The Home Depot will reward developers who design apps that drive brand awareness through social, location and other mobile services. Nokia will award developers 50 of its hot-selling Lumia devices for the best Window’s Phone apps, and Bravo TV will also be filming the hack as part of an upcoming reality show based on the Silicon Valley. 
 
Don't miss your chance to be part of the Big Brand Hackathon, register now!

Don Weigel Joins Micello Advisory Board
Jun 5 2012

We couldn't be happier to announce Don Weigel joining the Micello Advisory Board. Don is sharing his expertise on sales, marketing and product strategy with the Micello team. Don has been in the Geo technologies industry for over 20 years.  

Most recently Don was with deCarta as head of product management and corporate development where he led teams that built, and democratized the availability of location-based services. His team targeted developers, OEMs and mobile network operators providing alternatives to Google and Bing that enabled customers to control their own value chain with maps APIs, navigation, and local search.  Prior to joining deCarta, Don led solutions development and business development for Autodesk's geospatial division.  His team’s initiatives contributed to the company's record growth and leadership position in the telco/utilities/government geospatial markets.  He developed the product vision and strategy to merge geographic information system (GIS) and computer aided design (CAD) paradigms to create a new class of “GeoDesign” tools for building owners, civil engineers, urban planners, and utility designers.  At Trimble, Don started the Mobile Solutions Division and led product management and marketing. His teams built a SaaS and wireless services platform combining telemetry, “big data” analytics, embedded mobile hardware, and apps for location-based services, telematics, and mobile resource management to improve the way enterprises and OEMs manage their mobile workforces and provide services.  At ESRI Don held various executive positions during an 11-year span in which the company grew ten-fold to become the world's 4th largest privately held software company. He and his teams designed and developed apps and technologies that changed the way governments and enterprises gather and utilize spatial data for decision-making.  Prior to ESRI he was a GIS programmer/analyst.  He attended Cornell University where he focused on regional science and GIS.
 
We are so excited to have Don Weigel joining the Micello Advisory Board.  Don's experience and trusted leadership will shed new light on location based services as well as drive Micello's main focus- making really useful and accurate maps of your favorite places.