JEDDAH, 2 May — Important and reliable information about three major cities of the Kingdom — Riyadh, Jeddah and Makkah — is now available on CDs.
Al-Daleel Information Systems has launched CDs which are perfect reference tools for locating any facility or landmark in major Saudi cities. Speaking to Arab News, Prince Amr Muhammad Al-Faisal, the company’s president, said the Explorer Series of CDs are Windows-based programs which use digital maps. They include information on all landmarks, utilities, places of historical importance and tourist spots. They also incorporate colorful pictures of the places that are worth seeing.
Al-Faisal said the CDs could be the ideal navigator to familiarize people with the cities and, therefore, could be used for business as well as tourist purposes.
He said the Riyadh Explorer was developed in cooperation with the Riyadh Development Authority which provided necessary information and statistics. It was developed with the objective of providing detailed and informative maps. High quality pictures and videos of Riyadh’s features and historical sites were also included to build up user interest.
Jeddah Explorer was developed in cooperation with the Space Research Institute of King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), which used satellite images to produce up-to-date digital maps for the Bride of the Red Sea.
In Makkah Explorer some extra features have been added, which will serve more as a learning and market research tool, Al-Faisal said.
He added the Madinah Explorer will be in the market this month, while a comprehensive but compact Explorer CD of whole of Saudi Arabia will be launched later.
The CDs are easy to use and rich in information which is reliable and authentic. “If you have one of these CDs you will never get lost in the city,” Al-Faisal said.
They have been designed and developed locally by Saudi experts without any outside support. “I have tremendous faith in the expertise of the Saudi manpower, which is second to none in the field of IT.”
At present, Al-Daleel experts are working on developing an advance vehicular locating system (AVLS), which has been designed to track the movement of vehicles and to know their whereabouts at any time. The field-testing for the AVLS is in progress with encouraging results and it will be marketed by the year-end, Al-Faisal said.
