Monday, December 3, 2012

Coffee Run app (McRun) accepted into Google Places API Developer Challenge

Kyght's latest update to McRun to enable integration with Google's Cloud Platform & Messaging has been accepted into Google Places API Developer Challenge.


Coffee Run (McRun) as seen in
Google App Gallery 

Coffee Run allows you to instantly notify people around you when you're going on a coffee run, or share you run via a web link. Friends can submit their orders directly to your mobile device. Manage your run by stopping order taking, messaging users or kicking orders off your list. When you’re ready to go click “Let’s Go” to see where your orders are physically located and the closest McDonalds. When you get back just click “Complete” to notify everyone where their coffees are.


Likewise, wish you had a McCafe coffee, but you can’t leave the office. Maybe someone else is going, when you enter your locations of interest, you will receive a notification when someone else is going on a coffee run from or to that location. Just press “I’m IN” and your order is submitted to the runner. The runners location is tracked during the run and you can watch their progress.



Many people on the way to work pick up their daily coffee. This often causes traffic congestion around popular coffee locations. When people at a workplace install the coffee run app and set up their locations, they will get a notification when someone is going to pick up coffee on their way to work. They can submit their order to that person to have them pick up their coffee as well; this allows other co-workers to process directly to work.



When a runner selects a McDonalds location (from the Google Places API), it also shows municipal transit stops close to you and that location. These points of interest are loaded from municipal data sources and augmented with Google Places.



Direction are retrieved from Google Directions in transit mode by default, walking and driving modes are also available, with the least green choice "Driving" appearing in red. Positional information of the runner is also stored in Google App Engine; this information can be later used to determine frequent routes taken and average departure times to help improve mass transit.

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