Hi - a quick question for this BT newbie - apologies if this is covered somewhere and I have just not found it but I have not yet familiarised myself with all of the core capabilities of BT. There is a very specific thing I need my App to do (and it's a big part of its USP) so I kind of need to know if BT can support it before I get to much further. It involves the user being able to enter postcodes(zip codes) for mulitple start and end destinations across Europe (or across USA). I would then need my App to submit this date to Google Distance Matrix API (so I have read) to establish the overall ROAD TRAVEL distance for entire journey (or for each leg - to be decided yet). I also believe the Google Distance Matrix API can return additional information like Road or Bridge Tolls, bodies of water (where road journey requires a ferry trip) etc. Is Google Distance Matrix API something that BTv1.5 (iOS and Android) can handle or is this something I would have to do develop outside of BT? If it can be done within BT then I will be a very happy chappy cos this is most definitely the most complex part of my App......thanks

//// submit this data to Google Distance Matrix API

Not familiar with google matrix API, perhaps you're referring to obtaining directions with google maps. If so, easy as Apple pie. http://wp.me/p1ZRa7-7M

Nope not directions, the API returns road distance between to points.

Do you have a link?

here you go http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/distancematrix/

Here's what Google says and BTW I think its a new API .......The Google Distance Matrix API is a service that provides travel distance and time for a matrix of origins and destinations. The information returned is based on the recommended route between start and end points, as calculated by the Google Maps API, and consists of rows containing duration and distance values for each pair. This service does not return detailed route information. Route information can be obtained by passing the desired single origin and destination to the Directions API.

sorry should have said, I dont need the detailed route information (so dont need to call the Directions API), I dont even need the travel time, just need the travel mileage between two locations - although as per my original post, I will want to submit several start and end points in one hit e.g. I would want to submit as one message 1) Start point A to End Point B 2) Start point B to End Point C 3) Start point C to End Point D And API simply returns 3 mileage values relating to each of the above...... i.e. 500,455,120

Thanks for them link and info. From my limited understanding this is completely doable (not by little ol me). Hopefully a few of the others will join this thread and show us how it's done. Fred

Not experienced myself with this API(first time I heard about it), but seems a pretty useful one. I guess my question would be if you can embed a form in a custom HTML menu, and send the data to Google to retrieve the required information based on this API. If you can put it in an HTML doc on your computer and it works fine in a browser, than BT can cover it. So, if this will be confirmed as possible, you will only need to understand how to use their API. Please come back with any updates as this is interesting. LE: Check the javascript page from Google. They also show a sample HTML page: http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/distancematrix.html So I guess it can be embedded(never had a doubt ;)), but I don't know how to send the data from an input form. Even later edit: Check this cool example of it here: http://googlegeodevelopers.blogspot.com/2011/05/what-is-distance-matrix.html Good luck, Vali

Thanks guys ..... looks promising, pretty complex eh for my first App !!!! .... Hopefully by the time I have built the basic App I will be confident enuf to tackle this bad boy :)