OREANDA-NEWS. May 4, 2012. Lintel, a leading provider of directory inquiry and Contact Centre services in Lithuania, has offered 118, an application for smartphones. It differs from other information search solutions in that it not only finds business and residential contacts, but also can determine the user’s location and provide information that is relevant to a person located at that particular point. For instance, at present, the application users are informed about the discounts offered to them by the nearest "Chili" restaurants.

 According to Remigijus Љeris, Director of Lintel, a company belonging to TEO Group, the new application will become a handy tool for smartphone users searching for information, and will open more opportunities for small and medium-sized businesses.

 "The applications function "Around Me" will provide new customer search opportunities for small catering or car service companies, whose advertising budgets are too small for advertising on television or in the press. Subject to the user’s approval, the application "finds" which part of the city he/she is in and, having considered the information the user is searching for, provides the user with relevant advertising or information", - R.Sheris said.

The application 118 uses the business and residential contact database, from which information is provided by phone 118 and on the website www.118.lt . The daily updated database currently contains information on telephone numbers of more than 80 thousand business organizations and 800 thousand residential subscribers. The new application 118 is available in Lithuanian, English and Russian languages, making it convenient to use also for people arriving to Lithuania for a short period of time.

 With the growing number of Internet users, at the end of 2008 Lintel also entered the Internet search market – launched www.118.lt, an Internet portal for searching for businesses, residential subscribers and public transport routes. Last year, it became the leader in the "Yellow Pages" category. Every month, more than 300 thousand unique visitors search for information on this website, while about 15 thousand customers perform searches by using their smartphones. Therefore, with the new application 118, information will be available to them in an even more convenient manner.

The most popular means of searching for information are determined by constantly changing technologies. A decade ago, the most common source of information was telephone directories and the Directory Inquiry Service 118, which started its activities 12 years ago and soon became popular, today receives more than 4 million calls per year.

When developing the application, a GPS technology was adapted and the smartphone-supported programming languages, such as Java (for phones with the Android operating system) and Objective-C (for iPhones), were employed. These programming languages ensure fast and stable operation of the application. In Lithuania, applications are developed mainly on the basis of a simpler technology, HTML, which has fewer options and is slightly slower. The new application was developed for 8 months. According to Metasite, the company which developed the application, this is the first real-time application in Lithuania that has so many functions and works with such large databases.