Schmap Enables Any Website for iPhone Starting Today

Today a new service from Schmap is out of private beta to help webmasters optimize any of their websites for iPhone almost without efforts and completely for free as well. This optimization is only intended for the contact details so it will be most helpful for local businesses, like restaurants or coffee shops.

Actually the main service of Schmap is assembling online guides for various places around the world based on user-submitted information. It also allows downloading desktop guides for any place out of their 200 destinations for you to use on your laptop when travelling or to familiarize yourself with the chosen destination before actually going there.

Today’s out-of-beta solution actually looks like a standalone project (or service) that is not actually connected with Schmap’s main line of activity but probably will be integrated in the future.

This solution is intended to help local businesses to bring their customers right to their doors by optimizing their contact details and a map to find them for the iPhones that their prospective customers may use to browse their websites.

It works by providing website owners with a code that will generate a special bar to the regular website content (visible to iPhone users only) prompting visitors to view the contact information for the business - be it a restaurant or a bar. If a user chooses to take a look at the contact details, they will be offered in a view formatted for iPhone specifically. And “formatted” here means that a user will be able to call or email the business by simply tapping the phone number and email address and will also see a map by rotating the device sideways.

In the future releases they also promise to add similar functionality for other mobile devices, including Nokia S60, Google Android and BlackBerry. All those new devices will be supported by the publishers that already use the code for iPhone without them having to make any changes.

So if you own or manage a website for a local business that could use some help with explaining their potential customers where to find the business, I think Schmap is a very interesting solution for you that you can start using today.