Quick brainstorming session today at noon, about how one of us got lost in Edinburgh one night and ended up on a freeway thanks to having no data connection...
Now we have managed to build up a simple, light android app (less than 900K!) that solves this problem by sending an SMS to ask for directions, to a server that gives output based on the esri API. Even better, the directions are in the phone's native language - so you don't have to worry about being stranded in Beijing and having to use expensive data roaming.
We have coded the app and the companion server - which is also extremely lightweight, running in Javascript and Python, using Twilio for SMS processing.
Presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1cAoik-HOEXwsZjp7-iAdk-ZcklfDGFJFEqJsLlcXZpA/edit?usp=sharing
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