No more sneaking around. It's official.

The new year is just round the corner and it's about time we stopped sneaking around, pun intended. We would like to thank everyone who sent in their feedback, telling us what you thought about sneak and how we could improve it. After squashing tonnes of bugs and making numerous improvements, we're now ready to unveil sneak as the new gothere.sg.

For those who missed our first post introducing the new gothere.sg, the goal of this redesign is really to make it easier for you to find the things you want, and to improve the experience of browsing and searching for anything in Singapore.

We have since gotten lots of suggestions and feedback, and have made a few improvements to sneak over the past few weeks:

• Print and share places and directions
  
• Carpark entrances and improved transport markers
• Switch directions and close info window
• Real time traffic and street view integration

Apart from tweaking our search algorithms and fixing bugs, we've also included a few new things for gothere.sg.

Carpark entrances and rates

Carpark roads in HDB estates have made it into our maps, so you'll be getting more accurate driving directions, down to the entrance of the carpark. More commercial carpark entrances around the island have also been included.

To make things even better, we'll list up to 5 carparks near your destination. You can check the rates and choose which carpark you'd like to park at.

Expressway entrances in directions

Have you ever taken the wrong turn to PIE (Tuas) when you were supposed to head east to PIE (Changi Airport)? We've added expressway entrances into our directions so you won't be making the wrong turn again.

Real-time information in tool tips

When you hover your mouse over the bus stops, carparks, ERP icons and more, you'll get tidbits of real-time information in a tool tip. This is especially useful for carparks and ERP gantries as you'll be seeing the current rates and charges.

Search for bus stops

You can now search for bus stops with their 5-digit bus stop numbers.

Embed and current location

Existing features on gothere.sg which were not present in sneak have been added in as well. You can now get your current location (on Mozilla Firefox) and also share our maps by embedding them on your website.

We love the new gothere.sg and we hope you do as well. The older version is still available for now if you're reluctant to switch.

We'd like to thank each and every one of you who have contributed feedback and suggestions. It has been immensely helpful. That's all folks, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Sneak peek update: Street View!

We've updated sneak with Google Street View!

To display the Street View layer, click on the "camera" icon on the map controls, and you'll see the roads where imagery is available. Clicking anywhere along the highlighted roads will open up the imagery for that spot.

You can zoom in, pan around and move to other locations. To return to the maps, click on the close button.

As some of you may know, we were driving around Singapore in our minivan-with-cameras last December in order to release our own maps and street images. Well, what do you know, we crossed paths with the Google Street View vehicle!

We're not totally done with the integration yet, but we hope this update will go a long way in helping you find places more easily. Thanks Google!

Sneak peek update: Show me the traffic!

We've been getting loads of emails requesting for real time traffic information. We have a bunch of ideas for a better integration of real time traffic information, but unfortunately that will have to wait. In the meantime, we decided that you shouldn't have to wait! Hence, we are borrowing some sugar from our friendly giant's cafe latte.

To display the traffic layer, click on the 'traffic light' icon.

Before:

















After:


















Hope this update will sweeten your day. =)

Sneak peek update: Switch directions, Close map info window

Hi everyone, we're listening to your feedback! We have just added buttons for switching directions, and closing the info window on the map.

Switch directions

Close info window

We hope your experience on sneak.gothere.sg is now a little more complete with these updates. =]

Hello, Google!

Google announced real time traffic and public transport routing for Singapore yesterday. Google is a big, scary, but-not-evil monster and they are here to eat us for lunch. :P

Now that we have gotten that out of the way, it's actually an exciting time for Gothere. We have been expecting this launch for some time. With Google here, we can finally check out how we fare in the face of the giant.

We feel that Google's introduction will be a net positive for Gothere and the industry as a whole. As they bring more attention to the industry, it will be easier for Gothere as a small startup to reach out and work together with the bigger players. Also, there will now be plenty of people who will be inclined to try out the different map and directions websites because of the amount of media attention they will bring.

We are working diligently on a number of initiatives that we are confident will make Gothere even more helpful for our users. We are listening to you with big ears. Whether it's something that we are doing right, or something that's awfully wrong, we are always willing to listen. It's the only way we can make something that's always relevant to the people who matters - you.

As Mr Lee mentioned about Singapore, we have to make changes constantly to remain relevant and useful to the world. Rest assured that we are not staying put, we will always be evolving to make things better and easier for you.

You can probably say that Google is like your favourite coffee chain where you know you can definitely get a cafe latte in any of its stores, whether you're in sunny San Francisco or bustling Beijing. But nothing beats that cup of kopi-o siu dai from the nearby kopitiam uncle who knows you best.

[Iconic photo of Kopitiam Uncle from Liyin]

Location-based services is where the action is at the moment, and we're really happy to be in the thick of things pushing the industry forward! In all, we think that this is great news for Singaporean commuters, who will now have more choices in finding directions and locating places!

Sneak peek update: Car park entrances, improved markers and new maps

Hot on the heels of our previous update, we're now back with more goodies for you on sneak.gothere.sg.

Car Park Entrances

From the popular shopping belts of Orchard Road and City Hall area to the skyscrapers in the CBD, drivers often find it difficult to get to the elusive car park entrance. We understand the pain of driving in circles at crowded areas and cursing, "I see the building, but where is the car park entrance!?"

You've been asking for driving routes to be integrated with the car park entrances, and that's exactly what we've done. Searching for directions to buildings in the Orchard Shopping District and CBD area will now give you instructions on how to reach the building's car park.

For example, when searching for directions from Orchard Road to Chinatown Point, the old directions will only bring you to New Bridge Road.

Our new directions now bring you directly to the Chinatown Point car park. This just makes life much better, doesn't it?

Improved transport markers

Our map markers now show you more information such as bus numbers and train lines. In addition, we've also improved the look of the routes so that they stand out more clearly on the maps.

New maps

We have also released new maps for both gothere.sg and sneak.gothere.sg. As previously mentioned, we hope the new map design will improve visual organisation and reduce clutter.

Improved map performance

Lastly, we are continously working towards improving the performance of our maps and webpages. Our new maps now load and render 25% faster!

Hope you enjoy our updates. We'll be rolling out more stuff and moving sneak out of beta shortly.

We have new maps on Gothere!

To wrap up the week, we're introducing new maps for Gothere!

We're adjusting the look of our maps to make it easier to find the information you need. For example, we've optimised the road widths and building contours so as to improve visual organisation and reduce clutter, and we've made our maps less saturated so that important overlays such as directions and search results are more readable.

Here are a bunch of screenshots for you to see the changes.

 

 

 

We're not done with all the adjustments so it's only on sneak.gothere.sg for now. Nevertheless, we hope you like the direction we're heading. =] Have a great weekend ahead!