All those who use a portable GPS navigator, either integrated on a cellphone or a pocket one, know well that, when you find yourself inside a residential building or a complex such as a shopping mall, the navigation system would go mad and loses its accuracy, because naturally it is designed only to provide guidance on the road, not inside our homes or in a supermarket.

But today, thanks to a tool developed by the Washington State-based Point Inside, it is possible to use GPS navigation also indoors, at least if you are a customer of any point of the Meijer supermarket chain, based in the US Midwest.
In fact, from a cooperation between these two companies, an iPhone application is born, which will allow supermarket customers to navigate with extreme precision within the mall, to have an easier time looking for their favorite products and avoiding time wasting while wandering among the shelves.

This GPS application, called Find-It, is linked to a database of over 100 thousand items, and can provide guidance to its users towards the product they are looking for, by using a combination of signals from GPS satellite, mobile phone network and the one from the local WiFi network used inside the shops. Currently, Find-it is only available on 4 supermarkets from the Meijer chain, where it is being tested for any possible future development.

In the future, such an application could make its way out of shopping malls, to land in several other places where an assistance for orientation might be welcomed, for example in airports, especially the large international hubs where the less savvy traveler might easily get lost. Thanks to such an application, it could be much easier for them to find their way to the right boarding gate, with no risk to get lost… and to lose their flight!