Tim Hortons lovers raise a cup to this. You’ll never have to roam an unfamiliar city blindly searching for your next double-double.

A couple of Canadian developers, this week, launched a mobile application that helps iPhone users locate the nearest Tim Hortons and get directions to the store using the GPS (global positioning system) mapping technology embedded on the device.

Industry observers say the release of TimmyMe, which is downloadable for free from the Apple iTunes store, is just one indication a wave of mobile marketing apps is about to hit Canadian shores.

This trend will continue as vendors release full-featured cell phones similar to the iPhone 3G, according to one technology analyst.

TimmyMe was developed without the collaboration of TDL Group Corp., owners of the Tim Hortons brand.

“The application is probably not the first of its kind. But for mobile phone users and the people with their eyes on that market, this signals the wave of the future,” said Mark Tauschek, senior research analyst at Info-Tech Research Group in London, Ont.

The idea of using a mobile phone to lead customers directly to your front door is “very nifty” and would appeal to a lot of businesses, he said.

TimmyMe has at least sparked the interest of quite a few iPhone users, according to its creators from Zu.com Communication Inc., a Saskatoon-based Web-development firm.

“Over the past three days we’ve had 6,800 downloads for the application, it’s been used more than 42,000 times and we’re in the top four spot of most popular iPhone apps,” said Cory Jacobsen, one of TimmyMe’s creators.

Games, it seems, remain the most fashionable mobile application as Tetris continues to reign supreme on Apple’s iPhone app list.

Jacobsen and co-developer Blaine Korte, both avid Tim Hortons coffee drinkers, came upon the idea of creating TimmyMe, shortly after they returned from an iPhone developers’ convention in San Francisco this June.

“We wanted to create something truly Canadian serving a Canadian need. What could be more Canadian than looking for the nearest double-double,” said Korte.

Korte and Jacobsen have on numerous times found themselves in search of a Tim Hortons store outside their hotel when they go on business trips in Canada and the U.S.

Now TimmyMe users can simply activate the app on their iPhone and the phone’s built-in geo location tool will immediately search for the five nearest Tim Hortons store. The application will also indicate the distance of each store from the user. Further fiddling will reveal the location of and direction to a chosen store on Map App – the iPhone’s mapping application.

via - ITBusiness.ca