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Believe it or not, A2B started with one of its founders, Sam Critchley, cycling round
Amsterdam in the rain, Magellan GPS
320 in hand, taking position fixes outside restaurants in
the middle of the city in order to try and put them into some kind of
database. The idea was to sell the information to a
restaurant guide so it could be put on a website. Unfortunately, what
Sam didn't realise at this point was that there were already companies
providing databases with precise latitudes and longitudes of street
addresses all over the world. Luckily, Sam didn't lose heart - in fact,
his interest in Location-Based
Services (LBS) only grew.
A couple of months later Chris
Vandendorpe and Sam met for the first time in a bar in
Amsterdam. Chris' company, Tinystocks,
had been working on a software package for an Amsterdam restaurant
guidebook, and had been wondering if there was
any way to tie the information in the guide to a navigation system
using GPS. Chris and Sam got
talking, and they realised they both shared an enthusiasm for the
potential of navigation tools. They thought that, combined with the growth of mobile Internet access,
this could lead to something special.
Soon, a plan was formed. Sam would develop the A2B website, which would allow
members to retrieve information based on positions, and
Tinystocks would write GPSCookie,
a free piece of GPS software which would grab the member's position
from a GPS device and upload it to the A2B site. Tinystocks would also
develop a more fully-featured GPS package, Navio, also with A2B features, which
users would pay for. A2B would provide publicity for Navio, and
Tinystocks would publicise A2B. A2B would also use an open API so other
software developers could incorporate it as a feature.
Website and software development began immediately. Chris and Sam's
friend Sue Cowell's design
company Atomo came up with a
logo on a short
timeline. Chris dived into GPS
algorithms and NMEA messages, whilst Sam sought out great circle equations and climbed
the steep learning curve of web scripting and databases.
It took a while, and there were a few delays along the way, but A2B
finally went live in
January 2004. We hope you enjoy it!
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