Askfield is a location-based system (LBS), stemming from the idea of our good friend, András Kangyal.

Technically, it is a browser-based application that depends on the google maps api and Ext Js on the front-end, while it uses open source components on the server side.

The question the system tries to answer is pretty simple: what happens if we connect people via their interests in physical places, let them talk. We all have places that we know as the back of our hand. If you grew up in a small village, you probably know every street and the neighbouring hills as well, while others from big cities know ablock or two, or a district. In any case, you’d be happy and proud to share your knowledge with travellers asking you about your place.

It’s easier to understand the concept watching this short video:

Askfield demo from Ask Project on Vimeo.

Askfield.com is still an interesting project for us, even years after its development. This was the first big venture, where we wanted to build a service for ourselves, not because of a client’s request.

In brief, we failed. The longer version is that it helped us to realise that we need more time to introduce a product to the market than the time we needed for the development, plus we learned how important a business model is. One or two years passed since the end of the project and the mobile revolution changed everything in the field of the location-aware systems.

We see the first competitors implementing the idea for smartphones. Can we be proud that we saw this possibility long time before them? I think no. It’s better to realise that even the best idea without a full execution and introduction to the market is less than nothing.

Anyway, we know that learning is not cheap; in this case it took some hundreds hours of development. It was a cool project and it is still an interesting system. If you’d like to try it, contact us. and we’ll give you access.