TOP 5 WORLD’S UNUSUAL PLACES TO PROPOSE

St Valentine’s Day is the second best day (according to Chillisauce) to propose to the most important person of your life. It’s rather obvious - romance is very much in the air on the Day of Love. Choosing a place to propose is probably as much important as choosing a wedding ring. Paris, Venice, Juliet’s House in Verona and numerous islands are the most popular travel destinations to ask the most important question of your life. Nevertheless, if you don’t want to say “Will you marry me?” in some kind of ordinary place, here is Top 5 world’s unusual places to propose which you can find with the help of MAPS.ME.

Taj Mahal (India)

Taj Mahal was built as a symbol of a boundless love of Shah Jahan to his wife Mumtaz Mahal, a persian princess. The strongest feeling inspired the ruler to construct one of the most beautiful buildings in the world. Romantic stories and awesome views generally make us want to be a hero of our own love story, so your Chosen One will definitely agree to spent a whole life with you.

Waitomo Glow Worm Caves (New Zealand)

Dark caves are probably not very romantic places unless it is covered inside with… glow worms! Those creatures flicker mysteriously which turns a dark place into beautiful breathtaking canvas. It’s better than a night sky full of stars, believe us. Amused by such a scene your partner will have no words except YES!

Neuschwanstein Castle (Germany)

If your Beloved likes fairy tales or is fond of stunning views, the perfect place to make a proposal is a Neuschwanstein Castle. Not mentioning the landscape, the castle is so amazing itself, that Walt Disney chose it to be the Sleeping Beauty Castle and later, similar structures. Remember that fairy tales always have a happy end. 

Stairway to heaven (Hawaii)

The stairs that ascend up and down the mountains seem as if they would lead the way up to Heaven. Guess what was the reason to name this place as it is. The beauty of the surroundings would blow away anyone’s mind. But be extremely attentive: enter to the Haiku Stairs may be prohibited because of some reconstruction. If you both will climb these long, long stairs, who on Earth would be able to prevent you from living happily ever after like in Heaven? We believe it’s a brilliant place to start your long way together.

Ice Hotel (Sweden)

Using 31,000 tonnes of ice and snow from the nearby frozen Torne River, this Ice hotel was one of the first of its kind when it was originally built in 1990. Each year it opens in December before melting away in the middle of April. So you have a wonderful chance to say important words on Feb. 14, until the hotel is gone again. The houses made of ice are as unusual as cold, but that’s where hearts are melting for sure. Besides, if your fiancé(e) agrees to stay with you in such a frozen place for the whole night, why not spending the whole life together? :)

5 INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT MAPS.ME IN NUMBERS

2015 is rushing forward and we can look back at the previous year with pride and gratification. We’ve also gathered some statistics on the app, which surprised us a lot. So we decided to share it with you. 

1. As you might remember, at the very end of 2014 MAPS.ME became free (costed $4.99 before). At that period MAPS.ME community was about 7 million users. Now we’re happy to state that just in 6 weeks MAPS.ME userbase grew twice and became more than 14 million! Thanks for supporting us!

2. In 2014 our users saved 140 TB of traffic, 80TB of roaming traffic included! That means that MAPS.ME users saved over $50 million in roaming (based on average fees for 1 MB of roaming).

3. Last year 11 million maps of different countries were downloaded. 

4. Top 10 locations by number of installs being Russia, the USA, Germany, Taiwan, Thailand, Italy, UK, Brazil, Spain, Japan, France. Not surprisingly, people prefer to download maps of neighbour countries. By the way, MAPS.ME is one of the top rated apps in the Travel category in more than 100 countries.

5. OpenStreetMap community where MAPS.ME take maps, has grown exponentially to 1.8 million members for now. That means maps in the app become more detailed and we all get better maps with each passing day.


All these numbers are an excellent proof of your trust to MAPS.ME, therefore we can’t but appreciate this fact and all of your positive emotions that we receive daily via our social pages, emails and reviews on the stores. Thanks so much to all of you, guys!

Happy New Year to All Our Users!

Today we’ll bid farewell to 2014 and meet new 2015 year. December 31 is a perfect day to sum up everything we achieved this year. Let’s go through the brightest moments of 2014 together:

• MapsWithMe changed its name to MAPS.ME
• We released 2 major features - address search and offline route planning
• 11 new travel guides GuideWithMe released
• MAPS.ME became part of Mail.Ru Group and all the team moved to Moscow
• The app went free
• Our user base reached 10 million people.

We have big plans for 2015 and hope you’ll stay with us to reach new heights together. May all your Christmas and New Year wishes come true! Happy New Year!

Yours,

MAPS.ME team

Full Version of MAPS.ME Becomes Free and Open Source

MAPS.ME Pro that used to cost $5 in now available at no charge on all app stores. The full version will be called simply MAPS.ME and will replace the Lite version that has been removed from the stores.

If you haven’t bought the app by now, you’re lucky, as users can now access all great features such as offline search, bookmarks and route planning for free. Besides, the app will become open source in 2015.

A few days ago Google Play included MAPS.ME in its list of The Best Apps of 2014. 

Now this must-have app is free:

MAPS.ME on the App Store

MAPS.ME on Google Play

Get it now and tell your friends!

Mail.Ru Group, One of the Largest Internet Companies in Europe, Acquires MAPS.ME

We are happy to announce that MAPS.ME app has become part of Mail.Ru Group, a leading internet company in the Russian-speaking markets and one of the largest IT-companies in Europe. The acquisition will enable My.com, the company’s brand focused on global audiences, to offer additional services to its users and further accelerate its global expansion.

“Mail.Ru Group is a natural fit for MAPS.ME, they completely share our vision of open data and its role in the development of innovative technology,” said Yury Melnichek, Co-Founder and CEO of MAPS.ME. “Further, the millions of Mail.Ru and My.com users around the globe will now have direct access to our product, allowing for more contributors, and ultimately, a better user experience.”

MAPS.ME team will join Mail.ru Group and will continue to work on perfecting the app. The acquisition not only allows developers to implement planned features within short period of time, but also offers an opportunity to make MAPS.ME one of the most popular mapping services and increase popularity of OpenStreetMap.

Mail.Ru Group is a leading Internet company in the high-growth Russian-speaking Internet markets (Russia is Europe's largest Internet market measured by the number of users, comScore). The Company owns Russia’s leading email service and one of Russia’s largest internet portals, Mail.Ru. The Company operates all three of the Russian language social networks, Vkontakte (VK), Odnoklassniki (OK) and Moi Mir (My World), and Russia’s largest online games business. In 2013 Mail.Ru Group launched its first global project My.com that provides a suite of communication and entertainment apps.

How to Create Routes and Use New Maps Downloader?

Although both routing and new map downloader have always been two most required features by our users, question may still appear on how to use them. We did our best to provide you with the simple and user-friendly interface, however, some additional instruction will do no harm.

1. Map Downloader

Prior to using routing you need to update the maps. Go to Download Maps menu and you’ll see a new list called Downloaded Maps. Here you can see all maps you have downloaded to your device, update them and delete unnecessary maps.

You can update all maps by one button Update All. Please note that in order to use the routing feature you need to download additional data for each map file. We did our best to make these files as small as possible to save memory space on your device, but you can still choose whether to download them or not.

2. Routing

To create a route you need to tap on the Geolocation button and wait till the app determines your location. Then you need to find your point of destination (either on the map or using search) and tap on that place. At the top of the screen you’ll see the place page with a Car icon. Tap on this Car icon to create a route. When you’re ready to start driving, click on the Go! button and follow the route.

You can plan routes only within one map file (country/region/state) and only from your current location. In the future releases we’ll add the possibility to create routes from any point on the map. Please note that you can’t fully rely on the route offered by any software, including MAPS.ME. You need to take various factors into consideration, such as traffic, road works and road signs. Offline routing is a great help, but you need to always rely on yourself more than on any application to plan the most convenient route.

Please share what do you think about new features with us!

MAPS.ME Introduces Route Planning

Today is a big day for all of us. A killer feature you have been waiting since the first version of MAPS.ME was released is finally here. You no longer need Google Maps to plan routes, now you can create routes directly in MAPS.ME!

Although it’s not navigation in the full sense of the word, it’s a big step forward. You can now create a route from your current location to any place you need. So far, you can only plan automobile routes within one map. So if your route lies within one country (or one region/state for large countries, such as Germany or USA), it’s okay. But if you want to create a route from Belgium to the Netherlands, for example, you need to download two map files and create two routes - one to the border with the Netherlands and the other from the border to the point of your destination.

Please notice that we released a beta-version of routing, it means that it may not work perfectly well. We’ll appreciate your comments, suggestions and patience. Our email address is still the same: support@maps.me.

But it’s not the only great news about release 4.0. Another long-awaited feature is released. We improved the menu and you can see all downloaded maps in a separate list. It will be more convenient for you to manage the list of maps - update them and delete unnecessary maps and routing files.