A First For Adidas Auckland Marathon 2005

18 August 2005

Adidas Auckland Marathon 2005 is the First New Zealand Event with Maps and Directions for Mobile Phones

18 August 2005

Competitors and supporters in this year's adidas Auckland Marathon can now get maps and directions to start and finish locations on their mobile phones on Vodafone Live's SmartFIND service. SmartFIND traditionally provides maps and directions throughout New Zealand, including the ability to find locations such as bars and cafes, restaurants, car parks and petrol stations. This is a New Zealand first, where race information has been provided to mobile phones.

Thousands of people flock to Auckland for this event, with large numbers from outside of Auckland. Currently, entries indicate that no less than 16 countries will be represented at the 30 October event. Luigi Cappel of solution provider GeoSmart Limited said, "We were looking to extend our services on Vodafone Live to include event locations and wanted to start with a prestigious event where mobile access to maps and directions would add real value. The adidas Auckland Marathon attracts a huge number of competitors and we felt that this would be a great opportunity to help people find strategic locations on race day, and showcase our LBS (Location Based Services) technology."

adidas Auckland Marathon General Manager Stephen Brown said "We are constantly looking for ways to add value to our event. On race day, thousands of people descend on Auckland to compete in the Marathon and other distances, as well as a huge number of supporters. With different start venues for the various races, being in the right place at the right time is critical and we felt that access to maps and directions on a mobile phone would be a great service to offer."

About SmartFIND

SmartFIND is a service available to anyone using a Vodafone Live capable mobile phone. It allows the user to locate streets or Points of Interest throughout New Zealand. In addition to displaying maps on a mobile phone's screen, it will calculate the distance from one location to another and provide turn by turn instructions on how to get there.

About the adidas Auckland Marathon
The adidas Auckland Marathon is entrenched as an Auckland City event and in the national marathon calendar. It is undoubtedly New Zealand's premier road race event. It is the only true world-class road running event annually staged in New Zealand.

With Marathon, Half Marathon, 10km and 5km Walk options, this year's event will have an estimated 10,000 participants and an anticipated 20,000 people expected in Victoria Park for the race finish and free to all "Party in the Park" concert featuring some of New Zealand's leading contemporary bands.

About GeoSmart Limited

GeoSmart is the premier aerial photography and mapping company in New Zealand. In addition to being the leading supplier of cartographic and aerial maps, we are blazing the trail in digital Smart Maps including in-car navigation, vehicle tracking and fleet management. GeoSmart provides Internet Location Based Services (LBS) and intelligent maps for the widest range of devices including PC's, PDA's, Smartphones and Mobiles. This includes features such as 'Where is?', 'Where are my assets?', 'How do I get from - to-?' for example.

Clients include Wises Maps, DOC, Vodafone, Automobile Association, Navman, Siemens VDO, Toll Rail, BMW, Holden, Honda in addition to Transit NZ and most local bodies in New Zealand and Transit NZ.

ENDS

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